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English Classics 







_ Shakespeare's * 
• King John 




Kellogg. 



New-York, 
-.iiARD, Merrill &Co- 






E2MM 




• 



SHAKESPEARE'S 

King John. 



NOTES, EXAMINATION PAPERS, AND PLAN 
OF PREPARATION. 



(selected.) 




By BRAINERD KELLOGG, A.M., 

Prof essor of the English Language and Literature in the Brooklyn 

Polytechnic Institute, and author of a "Text-Book on Rhetoric," 

a Text-Book on English Literature, 1 ' and one of the 

authors of Reed &■ UTellogg's " Graded Lessons \ t ' 

m English" and " Higher Lessons m j . «*) W 

in English," etc., etc. ' J 

NEW YORK : 

Effingham Maynard & Co., Publishers, 

43- 45. and 47 East Tenth Street. 



Shakespeare's Plays, 

WITH NOTES. 

Uniform in style and price with this volume. 



MERCHANT OF VENICE. 
JULIUS Cy^ESAR. 
MACBETH. 
TEMPEST. . 
TWELFTH NIGHT. 
HAMLET. 
KING HENRY V. 
KING LEAR. 

KING HENRY IV., Part 1. 
KING -HENRY VIII. 
AS YOU LIKE IT. 



KING RICHARD III. 
MIDSUMMER-NIGHTS 

DREAM. 
A WINTER'S TALE. 
OTHELLO. 
CORIOLANUS. 
KING JOHN. 
ROMEO AND JULIET. 
MUCH ADO ABOUT 
NOTHING. 



Copyright, 1893, 

BY 

EFFINGHAM MAYNARD & CO. 






EDITOR'S NOTE. 



The text here presented, adapted for use in mixed 
classes, has been carefully collated with that of six or seven 
of the latest and best editions. Where there was any dis- 
agreement, those readings have been adopted which seemed 
most reasonable and were supported by the best authority. 

William Aldis Wright's exhaustive notes form the sub- 
stance of those here used. But as these plays are intended 
rather for pupils in school and college than for ripe Shake- 
spearean scholars, we have not hesitated to prune his notes 
of whatever was thought to be too learned for our purpose, 
or on other grounds was deemed irrelevant to it. The 
notes of other English editors and our own have been freely 
incorporated. 

B. K. 
3 



GENERAL NOTICE. 



"An attempt has been made in these new editions to 
interpret Shakespeare by the aid of Shakespeare himself. 
The Method of Comparison has been constantly employed ; 
and the language used by him in one place has been com- 
pared with the language used in other places in similar 
circumstances, as well as with older English and with 
newer English. The text has been as carefully and as 
thoroughly annotated as the text of any Greek or Latin 
classic. 

"The first purpose in this elaborate annotation is, of 
course, the full working out of Shakespeare's meaning. 
The Editor has in all circumstances taken as much pains 
with this as if he had been making out the difficult and. 
obscure terms of a will in which he himself was personally 
interested ; and he submits that this thorough excavation 
of the meaning of a really profound thinker is one of the 
very best kinds of training that a boy or girl can receive at 
school. This is to read the very mind of Shakespeare, and 
to weave his thoughts into the fibre of one's own mental 
constitution. And always new rewards come to the careful 
reader — in the shape of new meanings, recognition of 
5 



thoughts he had before missed, of relation between the 
chara Cters ^ ^^ ^ en the 

Shakespeare . just like examining Nature; there are no 
hollownesses, there is no scamped work, for Shakespea e 

is ztt^r* and as fct - hand as N « ure ^sei? 

Bestdes th,s thorough working-out of Shakespeare's 
mean ^ haj ^ ^ ^ ^ ™s 

eE™LL n ofr t0 make eaCh P ' a) ' a " Auction to 
the Et^LtSH of Shakespeare. For this purpose copious 
co.ect.ons of similar phrases have been gafherea from 
other plays; his idioms have been dwelt upon his T- 
cuhar use of words; his style and his rhythrn Some 
teachers may consider that ,o„ many instances are gfvT 
but, n teachmg, as in everything else, the old French S Tv 
tng ts true: Assez n>> a, ,a trap „> a . Th teach 

co e ,tte°d Tea r h PUPi ' l ° giVC W ™ "" " K *£ 
enoueh ' n i S 'T ° ne ° r tW °' " wi " P'oteb'y be 

"n sttT, ih am ° nS ; m a "' " is cer,ain that <*» «'■» 

pupils 1 I mem ° ry - " iS Pr ° bable th *<. ^ 'hose 
pupds who do not study either Greek or Latin this close 
examinat on of everv word -.„,! , t, • , 

er - " OI(1 J nd phrase in the text of m^t-o 

become"™ ""^ '° ^ h ° Ped ' hat Sh ^P^e should 



mal English of modern times a large number of pithy and 
vigorous phrases which would help to develop as well as 
to reflect vigor in the characters of the readers. Shake- 
speare used the English language with more power than 
any other writer that ever lived — he made it do more and 
say more than it had ever done ; he made it speak in a 
more original way ; and his combinations of words are 
perpetual provocations and invitations to originality and 
to newness of insight." — J. M. D. Meiklejohn, M.A., 
Professor of the Theory, History, and Practice of Educa- 
tion in t/ie University of St. Andrews. 



Shakespeare's Grammar 

points were r.ot yet settled ind\n%Lf trans ^ IOD - Various 
not only somewhS different toLo^f^X^^ 1 * 
uniform in itself. In the Eli^heth™ L " ?i Ut 1S by no m ^ans 
speech can be used as anj £mrtof g «^ m °! t an , y part of 
be used as a verb, 'They aHthft?; An adverb can 
backward and abysm of time • ' o? as an K as a noun - / the 
pleasure/ Any noun adierMVe ™ • f adjective, 'a setaoiw 
used as a transitive verb Yon ^n < , lutraiI! J">ve verb can be 
lice' or 'foof your enem y or ' f alP Jn PPy ^"J. £riend > ' ma ~ 
adjective can be used as an adverh a ,^ &Xe ° n his neck ' A ° 

comparatives (' more better 'Ko' ,„ d 1 ? uble "natives; double 
lowed by which tint bv «« t^l i* superlatives: such f oh 

Shakejperian Grammar. ummauve at all. —Dr. Abbott's 

Shakespeare's Versification 

ranged that the aeeemVcmsat re^ a* ta£K£', U ?E are so T 
tion is said to be rhuthmicS TnKl.„l !?_*£' ', he con >Posi- 
nsuaiiy of ten syiU^'^nW^ 'ftSS/SSC 



eighth, and tenth are accented. The line consists, there- 
fore, of five parts, each of which contains an unaccented 
followed by an accented syllable, as in the word attend. Each 
of these five parts forms what is called a foot or measure; 
and the five together form a pentameter. "Pentameter" is a 
Greek word signifying " five measures." This is the usual form 
of a line of blank verse. But a long poem composed entirely 
of such lines would be monotonous, and for the sake of variety 
several important modifications have been introduced. 

(a) After the tenth syllable, one or two unaccented syllables 
are sometimes added; as — 

" Me-thought | you said \ you nei \ ther lend \ nor bor \ row." 

(6) In any foot the accent may be shifted from the second to 
the first syllable, provided two accented syllables do not come 
together. 

"Pluck' the | young suck' \ ing cubs' | from the' | she bear'." | 

(c) In such words as " yesterday, 1 ' "voluntary," "honesty,'* 
the syllables -day, -ta-, and -ty falling in the place of the acceut, 
are, for the purposes of the verse, regarded as truly accented. 

" Bars' me \ the right' ] of vol'- \ un-ta' \ ry choos' | ing." 

(d) Sometimes we have a succession of accented syllables; this 
occurs with monosyllabic feet only. 

" Why, noiv, blow wind, siuell billow, and sivim bark." 

(e) Sometimes, but more rarely, two or even three unaccented 
syllables occupy the place of one; as— 

"He says\ he does, | be-ing then | most flat \ ter-ed." 

(/) Lines may have any number of feet from one to six. 

Finally, Shakespeare adds much to the pleasing variety of his 
"blank verse by placing the pauses in different parts of the line 
(especially after the second or third foot), instead of placing 
them all at the ends of lines, as was the earlier custom. 

N. B. — In some cases the rhythm requires that what we usually 
pronounce as one syllable shall be divided into two, asfi-er (fire), 
•su-er (sure), mi-el (mile), &c. ; too-elve (twelve), jaiv-ee (joy), &c. 
Similarly, she-on (-tion or -sion). 

It is very important to give the pupil plenty of ear-training by 
means of formal scansion. This will greatly assist him in his 
reading. 



PLAN OF STUDY 



4 PERFECT POSSESSION.' 



To attain to the standard of 'Perfect 
Possession,' the reader ought to have an 
intimate and ready knowledge of the sub- 
ject. (See opposite page.) 

The student ought, first of all, to read 
the play as a pleasure; then to read it over 
again, with his mind upon the characters 
and the plot; and- lastly, to read it for the 
meanings, grammar, &c. 

With the help of the scheme, he can 
easily draw up for himself short examina- 
tion papers (i) on each scene, (2) on each 
act, (3) on the whole play. 



1. The Plot arid Story of the Play. 

(a) The general plot ; 

(b) The special incidents. 

2. The Characters: Ability to give a connected account of 

all that is done and most of what is said by each 
character in the play. 

3. The Influence and Interplay of the Characters upon 

each other. 

(a) Relation of A to B and of B to A ; 

(b) Relation of A to C and D. 

4. Complete Possession of the Language. 

(a) Meanings of words ; 

(b) Use of old words, or of words in an old mean- 

ing ; 
. (c) Grammar ; 

(d) Ability to quote lines to illustrate a gram- 
matical point. 

5. Power to Reproduce or Quote. 

(a) What was said by A or B on a particular 

occasion ; 

(b) What was said by A in reply to B ; 

(c) What argument was used by C at a particular 

juncture ; 
(cTf To quote a line in instance of an idiom or of 
a peculiar meaning. 

6. Power to Locate. 

(a) To attribute a line or statement to a certain 

person on a certain occasion ; 

(b) To cap a line ; 

(c) To fill in the right word or epithet. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Date of Composition. — Internal evidence as to structure 
of verse, tone of thought, style of composition, as well as 
allusions, real or supposed, to contemporary events, have 
all been appealed to in the endeavor to fix the date at which 
King fohn was written ; but all we know is, that it is first 
mentioned by Meres in his Palladia Tamia, published in 
1598. 

Source. — Apart from history, the play is founded on an 
earlier one, by an unknown writer, entitled The Trouble- 
some Raigne of Iohn King of England, with the discouerie 
of King Richard Cordelions base sonne (vulgarly called, 
The Bastard Fawcon bridge): also the death of King John 
at Swin stead Abbey, etc., which was first printed in 1591. 

Outline of the Play. — The play opens at Northampton 
with the demand made by the King of France that John 
should relinquish, in favor of Arthur, the throne of England 
and Ireland, as well as the French fiefs of Poictiers, Anjou, 
Touraine, Maine. This demand is accompanied by the 
threat of war in case of refusal, a threat which John meets 
with haughty defiance and preparation for the invasion of 
France. On the departure of the ambassador, we are in. 
troduced to a quarrel between two brothers, the reputed 

II 



1 2 IN TR OD UC TION. 

sons of Sir Robert Faulconbridge, the younger of whom 
claims his father's estate on the ground that his brother was 
an illegitimate son of his mother by Richard' Cceur-de-lion. 
On their being brought before the King to have their dis- 
pute decided, both John and his mother, Elinor, remark 
upon the strong likeness which the younger brother bears 
to Richard ; and he, on being asked by the latter whether 
he is willing to forsake his fortune and follow her, joyfully 
assents, having apparently been long convinced of his true 
parentage. He is then knighted by John as Sir Richard 
Faulconbridge, in place of his baptismal name Philip. 
Almost immediately afterwards his mother, who had heard 
of the quarrel between tne brothers, and angrily followed 
them to assert her good name, is brought to confess that 
she had been seduced by Richard during her husband's 
absence in Germany, and that her eldest son was the result 
of the intrigue. 

At the beginning of the second Act, Philip, King of 
France, with his son Lewis and the Archduke of Austria, 
is preparing to besiege the city of Angiers, which refuses to 
acknowledge Arthur's right, when John appears on the 
scene with an English army. After mutual recriminations, 
each king appeals to the citizens of the place to admit his 
claim, John for himself,, Philip on behalf of Arthur. On 
their refusal, an indecisive engagement takes place between 
the two armies, at the close of jvhich the Bastard suggests 
that, uniting their powers, the two kings should first bring 
the city Into submission, and then continue the contest to 
decide to which of them. the city^ shall belong. The sug- 
gestion is approved; but, while preparations are being 
made to carry the agreement into effect, one of the chief 



IN TROD UC riON. 1 3 

citizens proposes a settlement of the quarrel by the marriage 
of Blanch, niece to John, with Lewis, the Dauphin. To 
this proposal Philip and John assent, the latter agreeing to 
bestow Anjou, Touraine, Maine, and Poictiers upon Blanch, 
as a dowry, while, as a sop to Constance and his own con- 
science, he proposes to create Arthur Duke of Bretagne and 
Earl of Richmond, and to make over to him the city of 
Angiers. The Act closes with preparations for the wed- 
ding. 

The third Act introduces Salisbury bearing to Constance 
the tidings of the agreement that had been entered into ; 
and, upon the entrance of the two kings, Elinor, etc., a 
fierce contest of words takes place between the mother and 
the grandmother of Arthur, the former bitterly reproaching 
Philip and Austria for having abandoned her son's cause. 
While these recriminations are going on, Pandulph, the 
Pope's legate, appears upon the scene, demanding of John 
his reason for refusing to acknowledge Stephen Langton as 
Archbishop of Canterbury. The king, defying the pope, 
is at once excommunicated by the legate, while Philip is 
bidden, on pain of the Church's curse, to break off all 
league with him, and to show his obedience to the pope by 
making war upon the " arch-heretic." Philip reluctantly 
obeys, and the first Scene ends with preparation on both 
sides for the conflict. The second Scene merely brings in 
the Bastard, bearing the head of the Archduke, whom he 
had killed ; and John, who in the engagement had taken 
Arthur captive, making him over to the custody of Hubert 
de Burgh, a Norman knight devoted to the king. In the 
third Scene the Bastard is commissioned by John to return 
to England and wring from the clergy their hoarded treas- 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

ures in order to meet the expenses of the war. On his de- 
parture, the king breaks with Hubert as to Arthur's murder, 
which with little demur Hubert undertakes to bring about. 
The fourth Scene is mainly taken up with Constance's 
lamentations for her son, now torn from her, and with 
Pandulph's persuasion of Lewis to invade England. 

With the fourth Act we come to the Scene between 
Hubert and Arthur, whose eyes the former is preparing to 
have burnt out in order to render impossible his coming to 
the throne. Arthur's pleadings, however, soften Hubert's 
heart, and he renounces his project. In the second Scene, 
John, newly recrowned, is urged by Pembroke and Salis- 
bury to give Arthur his liberty, and has scarcely promised 
to do so, when Hubert, entering, tells him privately of 
Arthur's death. On his announcing these tidings to the 
lords, they throw off their allegiance and quit his presence. 
A messenger then appears with news of the French inva- 
sion under Lewis ; and immediately afterwards the Bastard 
returns to report the result of his commission to plunder 
the abbeys, bringing with him a hermit whom he had 
arrested for prophesying that before Ascension Day the 
king would yield up his crown. John, having ordered the 
hermit to be taken to prison and to be put to death on the 
day to which his prophecy referred, gives the Bastard the 
task of trying to reconcile the revolted peers. On his de- 
parture, Hubert enters ; and, telling the king that Arthur 
is still alive, is ordered to communicate the fact to the peers 
with all possible speed. The third Scene opens with 
Arthur's death in his attempted escape from prison. The 
peers in consultation about joining Lewis, are met by the 
Bastard, who calls upon them to return to the king. He 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

has hardly delivered his message, when they come upon 
Arthur's dead body outside the castle walls ; and Hubert, 
entering, is accused by them of the deed. An angry collo- 
quy ensues, at the end of which Hubert is ordered to take 
up Arthur's body for burial, and the Bastard proceeds to 
rejoin the king, 

In the fifth Act, John, frightened out of his obstinacy by 
the menacing attitude of his subjects, determines to make 
submission to the pope, and yields up his crown, which is 
then returned to him by the legate. The Bastard enters 
with news that the nobles refuse to return and that the 
people are welcoming the Dauphin. At the king's entreaty, 
Pandulph goes off with the object of persuading Lewis to 
make peace, while John, utterly unnerved, leaves the Bas- 
tard to make preparations for the defense of the country. 
The second Scene describes the compact between the re- 
volted lords and the Dauphin, and the legate's unsuccessful 
endeavor to persuade the latter to return to France. In 
the third Scene, John enters from the field of battle, pros- 
trate with fever, and is borne off in a litter to Swinstead 
Abbey. In the fourth Scene, another part of the field is 
shown, in which the French lord, Melun, persuades Salis- 
bury, Pembroke, and Bigot to abandon Lewis, whose in- 
tention is to put them to death at the close of the battle, 
and to return to the king. In the fifth, the Dauphin, 
boasting of his success in the battle, is informed of the fall- 
ing off of these lords, and of the wreck of his expected re-en- 
forcements on the Goodwin Sands. Meanwhile the king 
has been poisoned by a monk, and Hubert seeks out the 
Bastard to inform him of this fact. Together they hasten 
to Swinstead, when, in the seventh Scene, the revolted 



i6 INTRODUCTION. 

lords, with Prince Henry, are found assembled round John's 
death-bed as he expires in great agony. The play closes 
with the news that the Dauphin is setting out on his return, 
and with preparations for the king's funeral and his son's 
accession to the throne. 

Deviations from History. — Having now traced the course 
of the play, it will be convenient for us to notice the main 
deviations from history which Shakespeare has chosen to 
make. 

In the first place, Arthur's title to the throne, which was 
without doubt a sound one, is represented in the play as 
indisputable, though in reality John had this much in his 
justification that in those days the rule of lineal descent was 
not as distinctly recognized as it later on came to be ; that 
in the second of Richard's two wills he is named as suc- 
cessor to the throne ; and that his accession was confirmed 
by election. In the next place, though Arthur's right was 
the cause of the wars between Philip and John, it was not 
in his murder that the. real troubles of John's reign, con- 
tinuing to its end, had their origin. These were due to his 
ill-treatment of his subjects, but for which the pope's inter- 
ference would probably have had but little effect. Again, 
"The great quarrel between John and the pope, with ref- 
erence to the election of Stephen Langton, did not take 
place till 1207, about six years after Arthur was taken 
prisoner at Mirebeau. Pandulph was not sent ' to practice 
with the French king' against John till 121 1 ; and the in- 
vasion of England by the Dauphin (which is suggested by 
Pandulph as likely to be supported by the indignation of the 
English on the death of Arthur) did not take place till 1216, 
the year of John's death " (Knight, Pictorial Shakespeare. 



INTR OD UC TION. 1 7 

p. 57). In regard to Arthur, Shakespeare has made several 
more or less important deviations from history. When we 
first meet with him, as also at the time of his death, he is 
represented as little more than a child, while in reality he 
lived to be nearly eighteen years old. In the second place, 
his confinement and death are represented as taking place in 
England. In point of fact, he was first confined at Falaise, 
and afterwards at Rouen, where he died. Further, the 
scene between Hubert and Arthur has no historical author- 
ity, Hubert having, according to Holinshed, saved Arthur 
from the men sent to murder him. In the play, Angiers 
refuses to acknowledge as its lord either John or Arthur 
until the question of right to the throne of England should 
be decided by battle ; whereas in reality Anjou, Touraine, 
Maine were from the first loyal to Arthur. Shakespeare's 
Constance is a widow ; the real Constance was at this time 
married to her third husband, Guy De Thouars. Moreover, 
she died the year before Arthur fell into John's hands. 
The Austrian Archduke, who had confined Richard in a 
dungeon, is made to live five or six years after the date of 
his actual death, and is represented as one and the same 
person with Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, in besieging 
whose castle of Chaluz, Richard was mortally wounded. 
The four wars between John and Philip are compressed 
into two ; and at the close of the play the Dauphin's return 
to. France makes it appear that all idea of trying to conquer 
England had been abandoned, though in reality Philip's 
efforts were continued for two years longer. Finally, 
though Holinshed, on the authority of Caxton, speaks of 
John as having been poisoned by a monk, he, according to 



1 8 INTR OD UC TION. 

the best authorities, died at Newark of a fever, not at 
Swinstead. 

The General Question of Literal Accuracy in Historical 
Dramas Considered. — On the subject of literal accuracy in 
historical dramas, Knight remarks, " It would appear 
scarcely necessary to entreat the reader to bear in mind . . . 
that the ' Histories ' of Shakespeare are Dramatic Poems. 
And yet, unless this circumstance be watchfully regarded, 
we shall fall into the error of setting up one form of truth 
in contradiction to, and not in illustration of, another form 
of truth. It appears to us to be worse than useless employ- 
ment to be running parallels between the poet and the 
chronicler, for the purpose of showing that for the literal 
facts of history the poet is not so safe a teacher as the chron- 
icler. . . . The ' lively images ' of the poet present a general 
truth much more completely than the tedious narratives of 
the annalist. The ten magnificent ' histories ' of Shake- 
speare . . . stand in the same relation to the contemporary 
historians of the events they deal with, as a landscape does 
to a map. . . . The principle, therefore, of viewing Shake- 
speare's history through another medium than that of his 
art, and pronouncing, upon this view, that his historical 
plays cannot be given to our youth 'as properly historical,' 
is nearly as absurd as it would be to derogate from the 
merits of Mr. Turner's beautifuLdrawings of coast scenery, 
by maintaining and proving that the draughtsman had not 
accurately laid down the relative positions of each bay and 
promontory. . . . There may be, in the poet, a higher truth 
than the literal, evolved in spite of, or rather in combina- 
tion with, his minute violations of accuracy ; men may in 
the poet better study history 'so to speak after nature,' 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

than in the annalist, — because the poet masses and general- 
izes his facts, subjecting them, in the order in which he pre- 
sents them to the mind, as well as in the elaboration which 
bestows upon them, to the laws of his art, which has a 
clearer sense of fitness and proportion than the laws of a dry 
chronology." 

Spirit of the Play. — Shakespeare has shown a wide dif- 
ference from the older play and Bishop Ball's pageant, in 
the way in which he treats the question of opposing religions. 
His feelings towards the papal power and towards Prot- 
estantism have no bitterness on the one hand or enthusiasm 
on the other; but, as Hudson points out, are "only the 
natural beatings of a sound, honest, English heart, resolute 
to withstand alike all foreign encroachments, whether from 
kings or emperors or popes." Shakespeare, remarks 
Gervinus, " did not go so far 4 as to make a farce of Faulcon- 
bridge's extortion from the clergy ; the old piece offered 
him here a scene in which merry nuns and brothers burst 
forth from the opened coffers of the ' hoarding abbots,' a 
scene certainly very amusing to the fresh Rrotestant feelings 
of the time, but to our poet's impartial mind the dignity of 
the clergy, nay even the contemplativeness of cloister-life, 
was a matter too sacred for him to introduce it in a ridicu- 
lous form into the seriousness of history." Another notice- 
able feature in the spirit of the play is the light in which 
Shakespeare, in accbrdance with historical truth, represents 
the feelings of his countrymen in John's time towards the 
papal interference. On this point Green, History of the 
English People, remarks, " In after times men believed that 
England thrilled at the news [of Pandulph's intervention on 
John's behalf] with a sense of national shame, such as she 



20 INTR OD UC T/OJV. 

had never felt before. 'He has become the Pope's man,' 
the whole country was said to have murmured ; ' he has 
forfeited the very name of king ; from a free man he has 
degraded himself into a serf.' But this was the belief of a 
time still to come, when the rapid growth of national feel- 
ing, which this step and its issues did more than anything 
to foster, made men look back on the scene between John 
and Pandulph as a national dishonor. We see little trace 
of such a feeling in the contemporary accounts of the time. 
All seem rather to have regarded it as a complete settle- 
ment of the difficulties in which king and kingdom were 
involved. As a political measure, its success was immediate 
and complete. The French army at once broke up in im- 
potent rage.". 

The Characters in the Play—John. — The more promi- 
nent characters in the play are John, Constance, the Bastard, 
and Pandulph. John, though cruel and weak, is not, at all 
events in the earlier scejies, portrayed in colors as dark as 
those used by the historians. Hume says, " The character 
of King John is nothing but a complication of vices equally 
mean and odious, and alike ruinous to himself and destruc- 
tive to his people. Cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity, 
licentiousness, ingratitude, treachery, tyranny, and cruelty 
— all these qualities appear too evidently in 'the several in- 
cidents of his life to give us room to suspect that the disa- 
greeable picture has been anywise overcharged by the pre- 
judices of the ancient historians." According to Stubbs, 
"John trusted no man, and no man trusted him " ; Macau- 
lay calls him." a trifler and a coward." Green alone has a 
good word to say for him, declaring that, "with all his 
vices, he yet possessed all the quickness, vivacity, cleverness, 



IN TR OD UC TION. 2 1 

good humor, and social charm which distinguished his 
House." At the opening of the play he is represented as 
blustering a good deal, though at the same time resolute, — 
a resolution no doubt largely due to his mother's strong 
will, — and showing in his invasion of France both prompt- 
itude and personal courage. He is, of course, ready enough 
to enter into an unholy compact with Philip, but the facil- 
ity of compromise is due rather to a consciousness of the 
doubtful nature of the title by which he holds the crown 
than to any promptings of physical cowardice. Again, in 
his defiance of the pope, Shakespeare gives him something 
like real dignity of purpose ; while his retreat from France 
is acknowledged by Philip and Lewis to have been con- 
ducted with masterly generalship. It may be that a good 
deal of the determination he displays is only such as would 
be evoked in any one so highly placed when amid the ex- 
citement of war ; for, no sooner is that excitement past, 
than he enacts the most shameless scene in the play, that in 
which he would tempt Hubert to the murder of Arthur, 
though not daring to put his temptation into anything but 
hints. Gervinus appears to discover in John qualities 
which Shakespeare would hardly acknowledge as his gift. 
"He is not" (i.e. at the opening of the play), that critic 
remarks, " the image of a brutal tyrant, but only the type 
of .the hard, manly nature, without any of the enamel of 
finer feelings, and without any other motives for action 
than those arising from the instinct of this same inflexible 
nature and of personal interest. Severe and earnest, an 
enemy to cheerfulness and merry laughter(_conversant with 
dark thoughts, of a restless, excited ten^»erament, he quick- 
ly rises to darih§ 



22 INTRODUCTION. 

best advisers, laconic, and reserved ; he does not agree to 
the good design of his evil mother that he should satisfy 
Constance and her claims by an accommodation ; it better 
pleases his warlike, manly pride to bear arms against threat- 
ened arms ; in his campaigns against Constance and her 
allies the enemy himself feels that the ' hot haste,' managed 
with so much foresight, and the wise order in so wild a 
cause, are unexampled." Here it seems to me that we have 
a nearer approach to nobility of nature than the play war- 
rants ; and, further, that Shakespeare would not be likely 
to invest with such firmness of backbone a character so 
goon to be shown as the very impersonation of weakness. 
'From the time of his return to England we see in him noth- 
ing but meanness, the most piteous vacillation, groveling 
humility, and 'an utter absence of anything like courage in 
adversity^; These may be the essential qualities of his na- 
ture, which stirring events have for a time obscured while 
brightening ; or it may be that " coward conscience," after 
the manner threatened by the ghosts in Richard the Third's 
dream, paralyzes whatever activity of mind he once pos- 
sessed, whatever resolution he had in France nerved him- 
self to display. In order to strengthen his position with his 
own countrymen, he on his return goes through the farce 
of being crowned again (in reality for the fourth time) ; 
he yields, plainly out of fear, to the. demand made by Pem- 
broke for Arthur's liberation ; he hypocritically laments 
Arthur's death when the news of it is brought to him ; is 
terror-stricken by the report of the Dauphin's invasion ; 
with incredible., meanness reproaches Hubert for the crime 
which had been his own suggestion ; apologizes as unreserv- 
edly when told by Hubert that his order has not been car- 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

ried out \ yields up to Pandulph the crown which he had 
boastfully declared he would maintain " without the assist- 
ance of a mortal hand " ; beseeches him in the very spirit 
of cringing- servility to negotiate peace with the Dauphin ; 
in absolute prostration of mind leaves it to the Bastard To 
make preparations for defense ; is seen hastening from 
the battle-field to nurse his fever at Swinstead, and finally 
in his death agony parades his facility of quibbling out 
maudlin lamentations for himself. 

The Bastard. — The Bastard pervades the play with a 
presence ever active. The first Act is almost all Faulcon- 
bridge, with his good-humored jests during the dispute, his 
readily-given adherence to John, his amusing jself-c ompla- 
cency on being knighted, and his affectionate patronage of 
his mother. In the second, his impudent banter of the 
Austrian Archduke relieves the contentious mouthings of 
the two kings ; his is the pr actical suggestion that Angiers 
.should be brought to its bearings by the combined attack 
of the opposing forces ; and from him, though pretending 
to no more exalted morality than the pursuit of selfish ex- 
pediency, we have a caustic commentary on the hypocrisy 
and treachery of Philip and John. It is he who is promi- 
nent in the battle of the third Act ; to him, instinctively 
assured of his fidelity, John gives the important and diffi- 
cult commission of wringing from the abbots some of their 
hoarded wealth ; through his agency, John, on the news of 
the Dauphin's invasion, hopes to bring back to their alle- 
giance the revolted lords ; from his lips we have the stern- 
est condemnation of Arthur's murder, a condemnation pro- 
nounced in spite of his well knowing that Hubert, if guilty, 



24 introduction: 

had only so acted out of misguided loyalty to the king. In 
his outspoken honesty, he shrinks not from freely chiding 
John when entreating the legate to help him to effect peace 
with Lewis ; in his embassy to that prince, his fearlessness 
teaches him a language of defiance which John had not 
dared to use ; in the ensuing battle he " alone upholds the 
day " ; to him Hubert hastens upon the poisoning of the 
king; and into his ear John pours his last querulous 
accents, persuaded that from him, if from none else, he 
will receive a genuine sympathy. The Bastard's general 
position in the play is thus set out by Swinburne : " Con- 
sidering this play in its double aspect of tragedy and his- 
tory, we might say that the English hero becomes the cen- 
tral figure of the poem as seen from the historic side, while 
John remains the central figure of the poem as seen from 
its tragic side ; the personal interest that depends on per- 
sonal crime and retribution is concentrated on the agony of 
the king ; the national interest which he, though epony- 
mous hero of the poem, was alike inadequate as a craven 
and improper as a villain to sustain and represent in the 
eyes of the spectators was happily and easily transferred to 
the one person of the play who could properly express 
within the compass of its closing Act at once the protest 
against papal pretension, the defiance of foreign invasion, 
and the prophetic assurance of self-dependent life and self- 
sufficing strength inherent in the nation, then fresh from a 
fiercer trial of its quality, which an audience of the days of 
Queen Elizabeth would justly expect from the poet who 
undertook to set before them in action the history of the 
days of King John." And, again, speaking of him more 



IN TR OD UC TION 2 5 

in his personal character, he observes, "The national side 
of Shakespeare's genius, the heroic vein of patriotism that 
runs like a thread of living fire through the world-wide 
range of his omnipresent spirit, has never, to my thinking, 
found vent or expression to such glorious purpose as here. 
Not even in Hotspur or Prince Hal has he mixed with more 
godlike sleight of hand all the lighter and graver good 
qualities of the national character, or compounded of them 
so lovable a nature ^as this." 

Pandulph. — Pandulph plays nearly as large a part as the 
Bastard. From Philip, though the most powerful of con- 
tinental sovereigns, he will brook no wavering in the fullness 
of obedience to be rendered to the Church by its eldest son ; 
though, knowing how important to the papacy is his sup- 
port, he condescends to put forth every subtlety of persua- 
sion, while in the case of the recalcitrant John he scorns all 
argument, and at once pronounces his excommunication. 
Upon Lewis he works by appeals to his ambition in order 
to use him as a tool for the subjugation of John ; and, this 
end attained, he has no object in further humiliating that 
king, no interest in further giving his countenance to the 
Dauphin's invasion. That prince may bluster for a while 
and refuse to be a puppet in the legate's hands ; but his 
hesitation is not of much longer duration than was his 
father's, and he retires to France in abandonment of a 
project which he had flattered himself was so soon to be 
crowned with success. Pandulph is a hard, unlovely char- 
acter ; but we cannot altogether refuse a kind of admiration 
to the stern consistency of purpose with which, in the serv- 
ice of the Church, he sweeps away all obstacles, even though 



26 INTRODUCTION. 

among his weapons unblushing casuistry and chicane are 
those most frequently used. 

Style and Subject-matter. — In style, at all events in the 
three first Acts, King Joh?i is closely allied with Richard 
the Second ; there is the same love of conceits, of antithe- 
sis, of rhetorical language, and empty declamation. And, 
though Shakespeare has now shaken himself free from the 
fetters of rhyme which so hampered him in Richard the 
Second, we have none of that rich prose which occupies' so 
large a part in the later historical plays, and gives them a 
vigor that is wanting in King John. Furnivall points out 
the similarity in subject-matter with Richard the Third. 
" In both plays," he says, " we have cruel uncles planning 
their nephew's murder because the boys stand between them 
and the crown. ' In both we have distracted mothers over- 
whelmed with grief. In both we have prophecies of ruin 
and curses on the murderers, and in both the fulfillment of 
these. In both we have the kingdom divided against itself, 
and the horrors of civil war. In both we have the same 
lesson of the danger of division taught to the discontented 
English parties of Shakespeare's own day. Richard III. 
is the example of the misgovernment of a cruel tyrant; 
King John of the misgovernment of a selfish coward. . . . 
The temptation scene of John and Hubert repeats that of 
Richard and Tyrrel. The Bastard's^ statement of his mo- 
tive, 'Gain, be my lord,' etc., is like that of Richard the 
Third's about his villany." The scope, however, of King 
John is much, larger than that of Richard the Third ; for, 
while the latter is but the history of the unscrupulous 
ambitions of one man and of the struggle for power between 



IN TR OD UC TION. 2 7 

the two rival houses of York and Lancaster, King John 
deals with matters affecting more deeply the vital interests 
of England as a nation, and foreshadows the independence 
of spirit in regard to religious questions which at a later 
time was to be the accompaniment to political independ- 
ence. 



DRAMATIS PERSONS. 

King John. 

Prince Henry, son to the king. 

Arthur, Duke of Bretagne, nephew to the king. 

The Earl of Pembroke. 

The Earl of Essex. 

The Earl of Salisbury. 

The Lord Bigot. 

Hubert de Burgh. 

Robert Faulconbridge, son to Sir Robert Faulcon- 

bridge. 
Philip the Bastard, his half-brother. 
James Gurney, servant to Lady Faulconbridge. 
Peter of Pomfret, a prophet. 

Philip, King of France. 

Lewis, the Dauphin. 

Lymoges, Duke of Austria. 

Cardinal Pandulph, the Pope's legate. 

Melun, a French lord. . 

Chatillon, ambassador from France to King John. 

Queen Elinor, mother to King John. 
Constance, mother to Arthur. 
Blanch of Spain, niece to King John. 
Lady Faulconbridge. 

Lords, Citizens of Angiers, Sheriff,vHeralds, Officers, 
Soldiers, Messengers, and other Attendants. 

Scene: Partly in England, and partly in France. 

28 . 



THE LIFE AND DEATH OF KING JOHN. 



- ACT I. 

Scene I. King John's palace. 

Enter King John, Queen Elinor, Pembroke, 
Essex, Salisbury, and others, with Cha- 
tillon. 

K. John. Now say, Chatillon, what would 

France with us ? 
Chat. Thus, after greeting, speaks the King of 
France 
In my behavior to the majesty, 
The borrow'd majesty, of England here. 
Eli. A strange beginning: "borrow'd maj- 
esty!" 
K. John. Silence, good mother; hear the em- 
bassy. 
Chat. Philip of France, in right and true 
behalf 
Of thy deceased brother Geffrey's son, 
Arthur Plantagenet,,lays most lawful claim 
To this fair island and the territories, 10 

To Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, 

29 



3 o KING JOHN 1 . [act. I. 

Desiring thee to lay aside the sword 
Which sways usurpingly these several titles, 
And put the same into young Arthur'shand, 
Thy nephew and right royal sovereign. 

K.John. What follows if we disallow of this? 
Chat. The proud control of fierce and bloody 
war, 
T' enforce these rights so forcibly withheld. 
K. John., Here have we war for war and blood 
for blood, 
Jo Controlment for controlment : so answer France. 
Chat. Then take my king's defiance from my 
mouth, 
The farthest limit of my embassy. 

K.John. Bear mine to him, and so depart in 
peace.. 
Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France ; 
For, ere thou canst report I will be there, 
The thunder of my cannon shall be heard : 
So hence ! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath 
And sullen presage of your own decay. 
An honorable conduct let him have : 
50 Pembroke, look to 't. Farewell, Chatillon. 

[Exeunt Chatillon and Pembroke. 
Eli. What now, my son! have I not ever said 
How that ambitious Constance would not cease 
Till she had kindled France and all the world 
Upon the right and party of her son? 
This might have been prevented and made 

whole 
With very easy arguments of love, 
Which now- the manage of two kingdoms must 
With fearful bloody issue arbitrate. 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 31 

K.John. Our strong possession and oiir right 

for us. 
Eli. Your strong possession much more than 
your right, 40 

Or else it must go wrong with you and me : 
So much my conscience whispers in your ear, 
Which none but heaven and you and I shall 
hear. 

Enter a Sheriff. 
Essex. My liege, here is the strangest contro- 
versy 
Come from the country to be judg'd by you 
That e'er I heard : shall I produce the men? 

K. John. Let them approach. — 
Our abbeys aud our priories shall pay 
This expedition's charge. 

Enter ROBERT FAULCONBRIDGE andPniLlP 
his bastard brother. 

What men are you ? 
Bast. Your faithful subject I, a gentleman 50 
Born in Northamptonshire, and eldest son, 
As I suppose, to Robert Faulconbridge, 
A soldier, by the honor-giving hand 
Of Cceur-de-lion knighted in the field. 
K. John. What art thou ? 
Rob. The son and heir to that same Faulcon- 
bridge. 
K. John. Is that the elder, and art thou the 
heir? 
You came not of one mother, then, it seems. 
Bast. Most certain of one mother, mighty 
king; 
That is well known; and, as I think, one father: 60 



32 KING JOHN. [ACT i. 

But for the certain knowledge of that truth 
I put you o'er to heaven and to my mother: 
Of that I doubt, as all men's children may. 

Eli. Out on thee, rude man! thou dost shame 
thy mother 
And wound her honor with this diffidence. 

Bast. I, madam? no, I have no reason for it; 
That is my brother's plea and none of mine ; 
The which if he can prove, a' pop's me out 
At least from fair five hundred pound a year-. 
70 Heaven guard my mother's honor and my land ! 

K.John. A good, blunt fellow. Why, being 
younger born, 
Doth he lay claim to thine inheritance? 

Bast. I know not why except to get the land. 
But once he slander'd me with bastardy: 
But whether I be as true begot or no, 
That still I lay upon my mother's head ; 
But, that I am as well begot, my liege, — 
Fair fall the bones that took the pains for me! — 
Compare our faces and be judge yourself. 
80 If old sir Robert did beget us both 

And were our father and this son like him, 

old sir Robert, father, on my knee 

1 give heaven thanks I was not like to thee ! 
K.JoJm. Why, what a madcap hath heaven 

lent us here ! x 

Eli. He hath a trick of Cceur-de-lion's face; 
The accent of his tongue affecteth him. 
Do you not read some tokens of my son 
In the large composition of this man? 
K.John. Mine eye hath well examined his 
parts 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 33 

And finds them perfect Richard. Sirrah, speak, 90 
What doth move you to claim your brother's 
land'? 

Bast. Because he hath a half-face, like my 
father. 
With half that face would he have all my land : 
A half-faced groat five hundred pound a year ! 

Rob. My gracious liege, when that my father 
lived, 
Your brother did employ my father much, — 

Bast. Well, sir, by this you cannot get my 
land. 

Rob. — And once dispatch'd him in an em- 
bassy 
To Germany, there with the emperor 
To treat of high affairs touching that time. ioc 

Th' advantage of his absence took the king, 
And in the mean time sojourn'd at my father's, 
Where how he did prevail I shame to speak. 
Upon his death-bed he by will bequeath'd 
His lands to me, and took it on his death 
That this my mother's son was none of his: 
Then, good my liege, let me have what is mine, uc 
My father's land, as was my father's will. 

K. John. Sirrah, your brother is legitimate; 
Your father's wife did after wedlock bear him, 
And if she did play false, the fault was hers. 
Your father's heir must have your father's land. 

Rob. Shall then my father's will be of no force 
To dispossess that child which is not his? 

Eli. Whether hadst thou rather be a Faul- 
conbridge, 
And like thy brother, to enjoy thy land, 



34 



KING JOHX. [act i. 



120 Or the reputed son of Cceur-de-lion, 

Lord of thy presence and no land beside ? 

Bast. Madam, an if my brother had my shape, 
. And I had his, sir Robert's his, like him ; 
And if my legs were two such riding-rods, 
My arms such eel-skins stuff'd, my face so thin 
That in mine ear I durst not stick a rose 
Lest men should say, " Look, where three-far- 
things goes ! " 
And, to his shape, were heir to all this land, . 
Would I might never stir from off this place, 
130 I *d give it every foot to have this face ; 
I would not be sir Nob in any case. 

Eli. I like thee well : wilt thou forsake thy 
fortune, 
Bequeath thy land to him and follow me? 
1 am a soldier and now bound to France. 

Bast. Brother, take you my land, I '11 take my 
chance. 
Your face hath got five hundred pound a year, 
Yet sell your face for five pence and 't is dear. 
Madam, I '11 follow you unto the death. 
Eli. Nay, I would have you go before me 

thither. 
Bast. Our country manners give our betters 
140 way. 

K. John. What is thy name? 
Bast. Philip, my liege, so is my name begun; 
Philip, good, old sir Robert's wife's eld'st son. 
K. John. From henceforth bear his name 
whose form thou bear'st : 
Kneel thou down Philip, but arise more great, 
Arise sir Richard and Plantagenet. 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 35 

Bast. Brother by th' mother's side, give me 
your hand : 
My father gave me honor, yours gave land. 

Eli. The very spirit of Plantagenet ! 
I am thy grandam, Richard ; call me so. 

Bast. Madam, by chance but not by truth 5150 
what though ? 
Something about, a little from the right, 

In at the window, or else o'er the hatch : 
Who dares not stir by day must walk by night, 

And have is have, however men do catch : 
Near or far off, well won is still well shot. 

K. John. Go, Faulconbridge : now hast thou 
thy desire ; 
A landless knight makes thee a landed squire. 
Come, madam, and come, Richard, we must 

. speed 
For France, for France, for it is more than need. 

Bast. Brother, adieu : good fortune come to 160 
thee ! {Exeunt all but Bastard. 

A foot of honor better than I was, 
But many a many foot of land the worse. 
Well, now Can I make any Joan a lady. 
"Good den, sir Richard!" — " God-a-mercy, 

fellow ! " — 
And if his name be George, I '11 call him Peter; 
For new-made honor doth forget men's names ; 
'T is too respective and too sociable 
For your conversion. Now your traveler, — 
He and his toothpick at my worship's mess, 
And, when my knightly stomach is sufficed, 17° 

Why then I suck my teeth, and catechize 
My picked man of countries : " My dear sir," 



36 KING JOHN. [act I. 

Thus, leaning on my elbow, I begin, 
" I shall beseech you " — that is question now ; 
And then comes answer like an Absey book : 
" O sir," says answer, " at your best command ; 
At your employment ; at your service, sir : " 
" No, sir," says question, " I, sweet sir, at yours : " 
And so, ere answer knows what question would, 

1 80 Saving in dialogue of compliment, 

And talking of the Alps and Apennines, 

The Pyrenean and the river Po, 

It draws toward supper in conclusion so. 

But this is worshipful society, 

And fits the mounting spirit like myself, 

For he is but a bastard to the time 

That doth not smack of observation ; 

And so ami, whether I smack or no; 

And not alone in habit and device, 

190 Exterior form, outward accoutrement, 
But from the inward motion to deliver 
Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth : 
Which, though I will not practice to deceive, 
Yet, to avoid deceit, I mean to learn ; 
For it shall strew the footsteps of my rising. 
But who comes in such haste in riding-robes? 
What woman-post is this? hath she no husband 
That will take pains to blow a horn' before her? 

Enter Lady Faulconbridge and James 

GURNEY. 

O me! it is my mother. How now, good lady! 
200 What brings you here to court so hastily? 

Lady F. Where is that slave, thy brother? 
where is he 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 37 

That holds in chase mine honor up and down? 
Bast. My brother Robert? old sir Robert's 
son ? 
Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man? 
It is sir Robert's son that you seek so? 

Lady F. Sir Robert's son ! Ay, thou un- 
reverend boy, 
Sir Robert's son: why scorn'st thou at sir Rob- 
ert? 
He is sir Robert's son, and so art thou. 

Bast. James Gurney, wilt thou give us. leave • 

awhile? 
Gur. Good leave, good Philip. 
Bast. Philip! sparrow: James, 21a 

There 's toys abroad : anon I '11 tell thee more. 

[Exit Gurfiey. 
Madam, I was not old sir Robert's son : 
Sir Robert might have eat his part in me 
Upon Good-Friday and ne'er broke his fast. 
Lady F. Hast thou conspired with thy 
brother too, 
That for thine own gain shouldst defend mine 

honor? 
What means this scorn, thou most untoward 
knave ? 
Bast. Knight, knight, good mother, Basilisco- 
like. 
What! I am dnbb'd ! I have it on my shoulder. 
But, mother, I am not sir Robert's son ; 220 

I have disclaim 'd sir Robert and my land ; 
Legitimation, name, and all is gone : 
Then, good my mother, let me know my father ; 
Some proper man, I hope : who was it, mother? 



38 KING JOHN. [act ii. 

Lady F. Hast thou denied thyself a Faulcon- 

bridge ? 
Bast. As faithfully as I deny the devil. 
Lady F. King Richard Cceur-de-lion was thy 
father. 
Heaven lay not my transgression to my charge ! 
Thou art the issue of my dear offense, 
2 3° Which was so strongly urg'd past my defense. 

Bast. Madam, I would not wish a better 
father. 
Needs must you lay your heart at his dispose, 
Subjected tribute to commanding love, 
Against whose fury and unmatched force 
The aweless lion could not wage the fight, 
Nor keep his princely heart from Richard's hand. 
He that perforce robs lions of their hearts 
May easily win a woman's. Ay, my mother, 
With all my heart I thank thee for my father ! 

{Exeunt. 

• ACT II. 

'Scene I. France. Before Angicrs. 

Enter Austria and forces, drums, etc., on one 
side : oil the other KING PHILIP of France and 
his power ; Lewis, Arthur,, Constance, 
and attendants. • v 

Lew. Before Angiers well met, brave Austria. 
Arthur, that great forerunner of thy blood, 
Richard, that robb'd the lion of his heart 
And fought the holy wars in Palestine, 
By this brave duke came early to his grave .' 



sc. I.] KING JOHN. 39 

And, for amends to his posterity, 
At our importance hither is he come 
To spread his colors, boy, in thy behalf, 
And to rebuke the usurpation 
Of thy unnatural uncle, English John : 
Embrace him, love him, give him welcome 
hither. 

Arth. God shall forgive you Cceur-de-lion's 
death 
The rather that you give his offspring life, 
Shadowing their" right under your wings of 

war. 
I give you welcome with a powerless hand, 
But with a heart full of unstained love: 
Welcome before the gates of Angiers, duke. 

Lew. A noble boy ! Who would not do thee 
right? 

Aust. Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss, 
As seal to this indenture of my love, 
That to my home I will no more return, 
Till Angiers and the right thou hast in France, 
Together with that pale, that white-fac'd shore, 
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring 

tides 
And coops from other lands her islanders, — 
Even till that England, hedg'd in with the main. 
That water-walled bulwark, still secure 
And confident from foreign purposes, — 
Even till that utmost corner of the west 
Salute thee for her king: till then, fair boy, 
Will I not think of home, but follow arms. 

Const. Oh, take his mother's thanks, a 
widow's thanks, 



40 KING JOHN. [act II. 

Till your strong hand shall help to give him 

strength 
To make a more requital to your love ! 

Aust. The peace of heaven is theirs that lift 

their swords 
In such a just and charitable war. 
K. Phi. Well then, to work : our cannon 

shall be bent 
Against the brows of this resisting town. 
Call for our chiefest men of discipline 
40 To cull the plots of best advantages : 

We '11 lay before this town our royal bones, 
Wade to the market-place in Frenchmen's 

blood, 
But we will make it subject to this boy. 

Const. Stay for an answer to your embassy, 
Lest unadvis'd you stain your swords with 

blood : 
My Lord Chatillon may from England bring 
That right in peace which here we urge in war, 
And then we shall repent each drop of blood 
That hot, rash haste so indirectly shed. 

Enter Chatillon. 

50 K. Phi. A wonder, lady! lo, upon thy wish, 
Our messenger Chatillon is arrived-! 
What England says, say briefly, gentle lord ; 
We coldly pause for thee ; Chatillon, speak. 
Chat. Then turn your forces from this paltry 
siege 
And stir them up against a mightier task. 
England, impatient of your just demands, 
Hath put himself in arms: the adverse winds, 



sc. I.] KING JOHN- 41 

Whose leisure I have stay'd, have given him 

time 
To land his legions all as soon as I ; 
His marches are expedient to this town, 60 

His forces strong, his soldiers confident.' 
With him along is come the mother-queen, 
An Ate, stirring him to blood and strife ; 
With her her niece, the Lady Blanch of Spain ; 
With them a bastard of the king's deceas'd ; 
And all the unsettled humors of the land, 
Rash, inconsiderate, fiery voluntaries, 
With ladies' faces and fierce dragons' spleens, 
Have sold their fortunes at their native homes, 
Bearing their birthrights proudly on their 7° 

backs, 
To make a hazard of new fortunes here : 
In brief, a braver choice of dauntless spirits 
Than now the English bottoms have waft o'er 
Did never float upon the swelling tide 
To do offense and scath in Christendom. 

[Dr?t/n beats. 
The interruption of their churlish drums 
Cuts off more circumstance : they are at hand 
To parley or to fight ; therefore prepare. 

K. Phi. How much unlook'd for is this 

expedition ! 
Aust. By how much unexpected by so much 80 
We must awake endeavor for defense; 
■For courage mounteth with occasion : 
Let them be welcome then ; we are prepared. 

Enter King John, Elinor, Blanch, the 
Bastard, Lords, and forces. 



42 KING JOHN, [act ii. 

K. John. Peace be to France, if France in 

peace permit 
Our just and lineal entrance to our own ; 
If not, bleed France, and peace ascend to 

heaven, 
Whiles we, God's wrathful agent, do correct 
Their proud contempt that beats His peace 

to heaven. 
K. Phi. Peace be to England, if that war 

return 
90 From France to England, there to live in peace. 
England we love; and for that England's sake 
With burden of our armor here we sweat. 
This toil of ours should be a work of thine ; 
But thou from loving England art so far 
That thou hast under-wrought his lawful king, 
Cut off the sequence of posterity, 
Out-faced infant state, and done a rape 
Upon the maiden virtue of the crown. * 

Look here upon thy brother Geffrey's face ; 
100 These eyes, these brows were molded out of 
. his : 
This little abstract doth contain that large 
Which died in Geffrey, and the hand of time 
Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume. 
That Geffrey was thy elder brother born, 
And this his son ; England »was Geffrey's right, 
And this is Geffrey's : in the name of God 
How comes it then that thou art call'd a king, 
When living blood doth in these temples beat, 
Which'owe the crown that thou o'ermasterest ? 
no K. John. From whom hast thou this great 

commission, France, 



sc. I.] KING JOHN. 43 

To draw my answer from thy articles ? 

K. Phi. From that supernal judge that stirs 
good thoughts 
In any breast of strong authority, 
To look into the blots and stains of right: 
That judge hath made me guardian to this boy : 
Under whose warrant I impeach thy wrong, 
And by whose help I mean to chastise it. 

K. John. Alack, thou dost usurp authority. 

K. Phi. Excuse; it is to beat usurping down. 

Eli. Who is it thou dost call usurper, France ? 120 

Const. Let me make answer ; thy usurping 
son. 

Eli. Out, insolent ! thy bastard shall be king 
That thou mayst be a queen and check the 
world ! 

Const. My bed was ever to thy son as true 
As thine was to thy husband : and this boy 
Liker in feature to his father Geffrey 
Than thou and John in manners ; being as like 
As rain to water, or devil to his dam. 130 

Eli. There 's a good mother, boy, that blots 
thy father. 

Const. There 's a good grandam, boy, that 
would blot thee. 

A nst. Peace ! 

Bast. Hear the crier. 

Aust. What the devil art thou? 

Bast. One that will play the devil, sir, with 
you, 
An a' may catch your hide and you alone : 
You are the hare of whom the proverb goes, 
Whose valor plucks dead lions by the beard : 



44 KING JOHN. [act II. 

I '11 smoke your skin-coat, an I catch you right ; 
140 Sirrah, look to 't ; i' faith, I will, i' faith. 

Blanch. Oh, well did he become that lion's 
robe 
That did disrobe the lion of that robe ! 

Bast. It lies as sightly on the back of him 
As great Alcides' shows upon an ass : — 
But, ass, I '11 take that burden from your back, 
Or lay on that shall make your shoulders crack. 
Aust. What cracker is this same that deafs 
our ears 
With this abundance of superfluous breath ? 
King Philip, determine what we shall do 
straight. 
150 K. Phi. Women and fools, break off your 
conference. 
King John, this is the very sum of all : 
England and Ireland, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, 
In right of Arthur do I claim of thee : 
Wilt thou resign them and lay down thy arms? 
K. John. My' life as soon : I do defy thee, 
. France. 
Arthur of Bretagne, yield thee to my hand ; 
And out of my dear love I '11 give thee more 
Than e'er the coward hand of France can win : 
Submit thee, boy. 
Eli. Come to t^iy grandam, child. 

160 Const. Do, child, go to it grandam, child ; 
Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will 
Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig: 
There's a good grandam. 

Artti.. Good my mother, peace ! 

I would that I were low laid in my grave : 



sc. I.] KING JOHN. 45 

I am not worth this coil that's made for me. 
Eli. His mother shames him so, poor boy, 

he weeps. 
Const. Now shame upon you, whether she 

does or no ! 
His grandam's wrongs, and not his mother's 

shames, 
Draws those heaven-moving pearls from his poor 

eyes, 
Which heaven shall take in nature of a fee ; 17° 

Ay, with these crystal beads heaven shall be 

brib'd 
To do him justice and revenge on you. 

Eli. Thou monstrous slanderer of heaven and 

earth ! 
Const. Thou monstrous injurer of heaven and 

earth ! 
Call not me slanderer ; thou and thine usurp 
The dominations, royalties, and rights 
Of this oppressed boy : this is thy eld'st son's 

son, 
Infortunate in nothing but in thee : 
Thy sins are visited in this poor child ; 
The canon of the law is laid on him, 180 

Being but the second generation 
Removed from thy sin -conceiving womb. 
K. JoJui. Bedlam, have done. 
Const. I have but this to say, 

That he's not only plagued for her sin 
But God hath made her sin and her the plague 
On this removed issue, plagued for her 
And with her plague ; her sin his injury, 
Her injury the beadle to her sin, 



46 KING JOHN. [act II. 

All punish'd in the person of this child, 
190 And all for her ; a plague upon her ! 

Eli. Thou unadvised scold, I can produce 
A will that bars the title of thy son. 

Const. Ay, who doubts that ? a will ! a wicked 
will ; 
A woman's will ; a canker'd grandam's will ! 
K. Phi. Peace, lady ! pause, or be more tem- 
perate : 
It ill beseems this presence to cry aim 
To these ill-tuned repetitions. 
Some trumpet summon hither to the walls 
These men of Angiers : let us hear them speak 
200 Whose title they admit, Arthur's or John's. 

Trumpet sounds. Enter certain Citizens 
upon the walls. 

First Cit. Who is it that hath warn'd us to 

the walls ? 
K. Phi. 'T is France, for England. 
K. John. ■ England, for itself. 

You men of Angiers, and my loving subjects, — 
K.' Phi. You loving men of Angiers, Arthur's 
subjects", 
Our trumpet call'd you to this gentle parle — 
K. John. For our advantage ; therefore hear 
us first. 
These flags of France, that are advanced here 
Before the eye and prospect of your town, 
Have hither march'd to your endamagement: 
210 The cannons have their bowels full of wrath, 
And ready mounted are they to spit forth 
Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls : 



SC. i.] KING JOHN. 47 

All preparation for a bloody siege 

And merciless proceeding by these French 

Confronts your city's eyes, your winking gates ; 

And but for our approach those sleeping stones, 

That as a waist doth girdle you about, 

By the compulsion of their ordinance 

By this time from their fixed beds of lime 

Had been dishabited, and wide havoc made 220 

For bloody power to rush upon your peace. 

But on the sight of us your lawful king, 

Who painfully with much expedient march 

Have brought a countercheck before your gates, 

To save unscratch'd your city's threatened 

cheeks. 
Behold, the French amaz'd vouchsafe a parlel 
And now, instead of bullets wrapp'd in fire, 
To make a shaking fever in your walls, 
They shoot but calm words folded up in smoke, 
To make a faithless error in your ears : 230 

Which trust accordingly, kind citizens, 
And let us in, your king, whose labor'd spirits, 
Forwearied in this action of swift speed, 
Crave harborage within your city walls. 

K. Phi. When I have said, make answer to us 

both. 
Lo, in this right hand, whose protection 
Is most divinely vow'd upon the right 
Of him it holds, stands young Plantagenet, 
Son to the elder brother of this man, 
And king o'er him and all that he enjoys. 240 

For this down-trodden equity, we tread 
In warlike march these greens before your town, 
Being no further enemy to you 



4S KING JOHN. [act II. 

Than the constraint of hospitable zeal 
In the relief of this oppressed child 
Religiously provokes. Be pleased then 
To pay that duty which you truly owe 
To him that owes it, namely this young prince : 
And then our arms, like to a muzzled bear, 
250 Save in aspect, hath all offense seal'd up ; 
Our cannons' malice vainly shall be spent 
Against th' invulnerable clouds of heaven ; 
And with a blessed and unvex'd retire, 
With unhack'd swords and helmets all un- 

bruis'd, 
We will bear home that lusty blood again 
Which here we came to spout against your 

town, 
And leave your children, wives, and you in 

peace. 
But if you fondly pass our proffer'd offer, 
'T in not the roundure of your old-fac'd walls 
260 Can hide you from our messengers of war, 
Though all these'English and their discipline 
Wereharbor'd in their rude circumference. 
Then tell us, shall your city call us lord, 
In that behalf which we have challeng'd it ? 
Or shall we give the signal to our rage 
And stalk in blood to our possessipn ? 

First Cit. In brief, we are the king of Eng- 
land's subjects : 
For him and in his right we hold this town. 
K. John. Acknowledge then the king, and 
let me in. 
270 First' Cit. That can we not; but he that 
proves the king, 



sc. I.] KING JOHN. 49 

To him will we prove loyal : till that time 
Have we ramm'd up our gates against the world. 
K. John. Doth not the crown of England 
prove the king? 
And, if not that, I bring you witnesses, 
Twice fifteen thousand hearts of England's 
breed, — 
Bast. Bastards and else. 

K. John. — To verify our title with their lives. 
K. Phi. As many and as well-born bloods as 

those, — 
Bast. Some bastards too. 
K. Phi. — Stand in his face to contradict 280 

his claim. 
First Cit. Till you compound whose right is 
worthiest, 
We for the worthiest hold the right from both. 
K.John. Then God forgive the sin of all 
those souls 
That, to their everlasting residence, 
Before the dew of evening fall, shall fleet, 
In dreadful. trial of our kingdom's king ! 
K. Phi. Amen, amen! Mount, chevaliers! 

to arms ! 
Bast. Saint George, that swing'd the dragon, 
and e'er since 
Sits on his horse back at mine hostess' door, 
Teach us some fence ! [ To Attst.] Sirrah, were I 290 

at home, 
At your den, sirrah, with your lioness, 
I 'd set an ox-head to your lion's hide, 
And make a monster of you. 

Aust. Peace ! no more. 



50 KING JOHN. [act ii. 

Bast. Oh, tremble, for you hear the lion roar. 
K. John. Up higher to the plain ; where we '11 
set forth 
In best appointment all our regiments. 
Bast. Speed then to take advantage of the 

field. ' 
K. Phi. It shall be so; and at the other hill 
Command the rest to stand. God and our right ! 

[Exeunt. 

Here after excursions, enter the Herald of 
France, with trumpets, to the gates. 

300 F. Her. You men of Angiers, open wide 
your gates, 
And let young Arthur, Duke of Bretagne, in ; 
Who by the hand of France this day hath made 
Much work for tears in many an English 

mother, 
Whose sons lie scatter'd on the bleeding ground ; 
Many a widow's husband groveling lies, 
Coldly embracing the discolor'd earth ; 
And. victory, with little loss, doth play 
Upon the dancing banners of the French, 
Who are at hand, triumphantly display 'd, 

310 To enter conquerors and to proclaim 

Arthur of Bretagne England's king and yours. 

Enter English Herald, with trumpet. 

E. Her. Rejoice, you men of Angiers, ring 
your bells ; 

King John, your king and England's, doth ap- 
proach, 

Commander of this hot, malicious day : 



sc. I.] KING JOHN. 51 

Their armors, that march'd hence so silver- 
bright, . 

Hither return all gilt with Frenchmen's blood ; 

There stuck no plume in any English crest 

That is removed by a staff of France ; 

Our colors do return in those same hands 

That did display them when we first march'd 3 2 ° 
forth ; 

And, like a jolly troop of huntsmen, come 

Our lusty English, all with purpled hands, 

Dyed in the dying slaughter of their foes : 

Open your gates and give the victors way. • 
First Cit. Heralds, from off our towers we 
might behold, 

From first to last, the onset and retire 

Of both your armies : whose equality 

By our best eyes cannot be censured : 

Blood hath bought blood and blows have an- 
swer'd blows ; 

Strength match'd with strength, and power con- 
fronted power : 33° 

Both are alike ; and both alike we like. 

One must prove greatest : while they weigh so 
even, 

We hold our town for neither yet for both. 

Re-enter the two Kings, with their powers, 
severally. 

■ K.John. France, hast thou yet more blood 

to cast away ? 
Say, shall the current of our right run on ? 
Whose passage, vex'd with thy impediment, 
Shall leave his native channel and o'erswell 



52 KING JOHN. [act ii. 

With course disturb'd even thy confining shores, 
Unless thou let his silver water keep 
34° A peaceful progress to the ocean. • 

A'. Phi. England, thou hast not sav'd one 

drop of blood, 
In this hot trial, more than we of France; 
Rather, lost more. And by this hand I swear, 
That sways the earth this climate overlooks, 
Before we will lay down our just-borne arms, 
We '11 put thee down, 'gainst whom these arms 

we bear, 
Or add a royal number to the dead, 
Gracing the scroll that tells of this war's loss 
With slaughter coupled to the name of kings. 
350 \Bast. Ha, majesty! how high thy glory 

towers, 
When the rich blood of kings is set on fire ! 
Oh, now doth Death line his dead chaps with 

steel ; 
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs ; 
And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men, 
In un.determin'd differences of kings. 
Why stand these royal fronts amazed thus? 
Cry, " havoc !" kings; back to the stained field, 
You equal potents,. fiery kindled spirits! 
Then let confusion of one part confirm 
360 The other's peace ; till them blows, blood, and 

death ! 
K./okn. Whose party do the townsmen yet 

admit ? 
K. Phi. Speak, citizens, for England ; who 's 

your king ? 



Sc. I.] KING JOHN. 53 

First Cit. The king of England, when we 
know the king. 

K. Phi. Know him in us that here hold up 
his right. 

K. John. In us that are our own great deputy, 
And bear possession of our person here, 
Lord of our presence, Angiers, and of you. 

First Cit. A greater power than we denies 
all this ; 
And, till it be undoubted, we do lock 
Our former scruple in our strong-barr'd gates ; 370 
King'd of our fears, until our fears, resolv'd.. 
Be by some certain king purg'd and depos'd. 

Bast. By heaven, these scroyles of Angiers 
flout you, kings, 
And stand securely on their battlements, 
As in a theater, whence they gape and point 
At your industrious scenes and acts of death. 
Your royal presences be ruled by me : 
Do like the mutines of Jerusalem, 
Be friends awhile, and both conjointly bend 
Your sharpest deeds of malice on this town : 380 
By east and west let France and England mount 
Their battering cannon, charged to the mouths, 
Till their soul-fearing clamors have brawl'd 

down 
The flinty ribs of this contemptuous city : 
I 'd play incessantly upon the:-e jades, 
Even till unfenced desolation 
Leave them as naked as the vulgar air. 
That done, dissever your united strengths, 
And part your mingled colors once again ; 
Turn face to face and bloody point to point; 390 



54 KING JOHN. [act il 

Then, in a moment, Fortune shall cull forth 
Out of one side her happy minion, 
To whom in favor she shall give the day, 
And kiss him with a glorious victory. 
How like you this wild counsel, mighty states? 
Smacks it not something of the policy? 
K. Joints Now, by the sky that hangs above 
our heads, 
I like it well. France, shall we knit our powers 
' And lay this Angiers even with the ground ; 
400 Then after fight who shall be king of it ? 

Bast. An if thou hast the mettle of a king, — 
Being wrong'd as we are by this peevish town, — 
Turn thou the mouth of thy artillery, 
As we will ours, against these saucy walls; 
And, when that we have dash'd them to the 

ground, 
Why then defy each other, and pell-mell 
Make work upon ourselves, for heaven or hell. 
K. Phi. Let it be so. Say, where will you 

assault ? 
K.John. We from the west will send destruc- 
' tion 
4 IQ Into this city's bosom. 

Aust. I from the north. 

K. Phi. "Our thunder from the south 

Shall rain their drift of bullets on this town. 
Bast. O prudent discipline! From north to 
south, 
Austria and France shoot in each other's mouth; 
I'll stir-them to it. Come, away, away! 
First Cit. Hear us, great kings : vouchsafe 
awhile to stay, 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 55 

And I shall show you peace and fair-fac'd league; 
Win you this city without stroke or wound ; 
Rescue those breathing lives to die in beds, 
That here come sacrifices for the field : 4 2 ° 

Persever not, but hear me, mighty kings.' 

K.John. Speak on with favor; we are bent 
to hear. 

First Cit. That daughter there of Spain, the 
Lady Blanch, 
Is niece to England : look upon the years 
Of Lewis the Dauphin and that lovely maid : 
If lusty love should go in quest of beauty, 
Where should he find it fairer than in Blanch? 
If zealous love should go in search of virtue, 
Where should he find it purer than in Blanch? 
If love ambitious sought a match of birth, 430 

Whose veins bound richer blood than Lady 

Blanch ? 
Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth, 
Is the young Dauphin every way complete: 
If not complete, oh, say he is not she; 
And she again wants nothing, to name want, 
If want it be not that she is not he: 
He is the half part of a blessed man, 
Left to be finished by such as she ; 
And she a fair divided excellence, 
Whose fullness of perfection lies in him. 440 

Oh, two such silver currents, when they join, 
•Do glorify the banks that bound them in ; 
And two such shores to two such streams made 

one, 
Two such controlling bounds shall you be, kings, 
To these two princes if you marry them. 



56 KING JOHN. [act ii. 

This union shall do more than battery can 
To our fast-closed gates ; for, at this match, 
With swifter spleen than powder can enforce, 
The mouth of passage shall we fling wide ope, 

450 And give you entrance : but, without this match, 
The sea enraged is not half so deaf, 
Lions more confident, mountains and rocks 
More free from motion, no, not Death himself 
In mortal fury half so peremptory 
As we to keep this city. 

Bast. Here 's a stay 

That shakes the rotten carcass of old Death 
Out of his rags ! Here 's a large mouth, indeed, 
That spits forth death and mountains, rocks 

and seas, 
Talks as familiarly of roaring lions 

460 As maids' of thirteen do of puppy-dogs! 
What cannoneer begot this lusty blood? 
He speaks plain cannon fire and smoke and 

bounce; 
He gives the bastinado with his tongue: 
Our ears are cudgel'd ; not a word of his 
But buffets better than a fist of France : 
Zounds ! I was never so bethump'd with words 
Since I first call'd my brother's father dad. 
Eli. Son, list to this conjunctiqn, make this 
match ; , 

Give with our niece a dowry large enough : 

470 For by this knot thou shalt so surely tie 
Thy now unsur'd assurance to the' crown 
That yon green boy shall have no sun to ripe 
The bloom that promiseth a mighty fruit. 
I see a yielding in the looks of France ; 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 57 

Mark, how they whisper: urge them while, their 

souls 
Are capable of this ambition, 
Lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath 
Of soft petitions, pity, and remorse, 
Cool and congeal again to what it was. 

First Cit. Why answer not the double majesties 480 
This friendly treaty of our threaten'd town ? 

K. Phi. Speak England first, that hath been 
forward first 
To speak unto this city : what say you ? 

K. John. If that the Dauphin there, thy 
princely son, 
Can in this book of beauty read, " I love," 
Her dowry shall weigh equal with a queen : 
For Anjou and fair Touraine, Maine, Poictiers, 
And all that we upon this side the sea, 
Except this city now by us besieg'd, 
Find liable to our crown and dignity, 490 

Shall gild her bridal bed; and make her rich 
In titles, honors, and promotions, 
As she in beauty, education, blood, 
Holds hand with any princess of the world. 

K. Phi. What say'st thou, boy ? look in the 
lady's face. 

Lew. I do, my lord ; and in her eye I find 
A wonder, or a wondrous miracle, 
The shadow of myself form'd in her eye; 
Which, being but the shadow of your son, 
Becomes a sun and makes your son a shadow : 500 
I do protest I never lov'd myself 
Till now infixed I beheld myself 



58 KING JOHN. [act ii. 

Drawn in the flattering table of her eye. 

[ Whispers with Blanch. 

Bast. Drawn in the flattering table of her eye ! 

Hang'd in the frowning wrinkle of her brow ! 

And quarter'd in her heart! he doth espy 

Himself love's traitor : this is pity now, 

That, hang'd and drawn and quarter'd, there 

should be 
In such a love so vile a lout as' he. 
510 Blanch. My uncle's will in this respect is 
mine : 
If he see aught in you that makes him like, 
That any thing he sees, which moves his liking, 
I can with ease translate it to my will ; 
Or, if you will, to speak more properly, 
I will enforce it easily to my love. 
Further I will not flatter you, my lord, 
That all I see in you is worthy love, 
Than this, — that nothing do I see in you, 
Though churlish thoughts themselves should be 
your judge; 
520 That J can find should merit any hate. 

K.John. What say these young ones ? What 

say you, my niece? 
Blanch. That she is bound in honor still to do 
What you in wisdom still vouchsafe to say. 
K. John. Speak then, prince Dauphin ; can 

you love this lady ? 
Lew. Nay, ask me if I can refrain from love ; 
For I do love her most unfeignedly. 
K. John. Then do I give Volquessen, Tou- 
ra'ine, Maine, 
Poictiers, and Anjou, these five provinces, 



sc. I.] KING JOHN. 59 

With her to thee ; and this addition more, 
Full thirty thousand marks of English coin. 53° 

Philip of France, if thou be pleas'd withal, 
Command thy son and daughter to join hands. 

K. Phi. It likes us well ; young princes, close 
your hands. 

Aust. And your lips too ; for I am well 
assur'd 
That I did so when I was first assur'd. 

A'. Phi. Now, citizens of Angiers, ope your 
gates. 
Let in that amity which you have made ; 
For at Saint Mary's chapel presently 
The rites of marriage shall be solemniz'd. 
Is not the Lady Constance in this troop ? 540 

I know she is not, for this match made up 
Her presence would have interrupted much : 
Where is she and her son ? tell me, who knows. 

Lew. She 's sad and passionate at your high- 
ness' tent. 

A'. Phi. And, by my faith, this league that 
we have made 
AVill give her sadness very little cure. 
Brother of England, how may we content 
This widow lady ? In her right we came ; 
Which we, God knows, have turn'd another 

way, 
To our own vantage. 

K. John. We will heal up all; 550 

For we '11 create young Arthur Duke of Bretagne 
And Earl of Richmond ; and this rich fair town 
We make him lord of. Call the Lady .Constance ; 
Some speedy messenger bid her repair 



60 KING JOHN. [act II. 

To our solemnity : I trust we shall, 
If not fill up the measure of her will, 
Yet in some measure satisfy her so 
That we shall stop her exclamation. 
Go we, as well as haste will suffer us, 
560 To this unlook'd for, unprepared pomp. 

{Exeunt all but the Bastard. 
Bast. Mad world ! mad kings ! mad com- 
position ! 
John, to stop Arthur's title in the whole,' 
Hath willingly departed with a part; 
And France, — whose armor conscience buckled 

on, 
Whom zeal and charity brought to the field 
As God's own soldier, — rounded in the ear 
With that same purpose-changer, that sly devil, 
That broker that still breaks the pate of faith, 
That daily break-vow, he that wins of all, 
570 Of kings, of beggars, old men, young men, 
maids, 
Who, having no external thing to lose 
But .the word " maid," cheats the poor maid of 

that, 
That smooth-fac'd gentleman, tickling Com- 
modity,— 
Commodity, the bias of the world,* 
The world, who of itself is peised well, 
Made to run even upon even ground, 
Till this advantage, this vile-drawing bias, 
This sway of motion, this Commodity, 
M^kes'it take head from all indifferency, 
$80 From all. direction, purpose, course, intent: — 
And this same bias, this Commodity, 



sc. I.] KING JOHN. 6 1 

This bawd, this broker, this all-changing word, 

Clapp'd on the outward eye of fickle France, 

Hath drawn him from his own determined aid, 

From a resolv'd and honorable war, 

To a most base and vile-concluded peace. 

And why rail I on this Commodity ? 

But for because he hath not woo'd me yet : 

Not that I have the power to clutch my hand, 

When his fair angels would salute my palm ; ■ rg 

But for my hand, as unattempted yet, 

Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich. 

Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail 

And say there is no sin but to be rich ; 

And being rich, my virtue then shall be 

To say there is no vice but beggary. 

Since kings break faith upon commodity, 

Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee. 

\Exit t 

ACT III. 

SCENE I. The French King's pavilion. 

Enter Constance, Arthur, and Salisbury. 

Const. Gone to be married ! gone to swear a 

peace ! 
False blood to false blood join'd ! gone to be 

friends ! 
Shall Lewis" have Blanch, and Blanch those 

provinces ? 
It is not so; thou hast misspoke, misheard; 
Be well advis'd, tell o'er thy tale again : 
It cannot be ; thou dost but say 't is so : 
1 trust I may not trust thee ; for thy word 



62 KING JOHN. [act hi. 

Is but the vain breath of a common man : 
Believe me, I do not believe thee, man ; 
10 I have a king's oath to.the contrary. 

Thou shalt be punish'd for thus frighting me, 

For I am sick and capable of fears, 

Oppress'd with wrongs and therefore full of 

fears ; 
A widow, husbandless, subject to fears ; 
A woman, naturally born to fears ; 
And, though thou now confess thou didst but 

jest, 
With my vex'd spirits I cannot take a truce, 
But they will quake and tremble all this day. 
What dost thou mean by shaking of thy head ? 
20 Why dost thou look so sadly on my son ? 

What means that hand upon that breast of 

thine? 
Why holds thine eye that lamentable rheum, 
Like a proud river peering o'er his bounds ? 
Be these sad signs confirmers of thy words? 
Then speak again ; not all thy former tale, 
But this one word, whether thy tale be true. 
Sal. As true as I believe you think them 

false 
That give you cause to prove my saying true. 
Const. Oh, if thou teach me to believe this 

sorrow, 
30 Teach thou this sorrow how to make me die, 
And let belief and life encounter so 
As doth the fury of two desperate men 
Which in the very meeting fall and die. 
Lewis marry Blanch ! O boy, then where art 

thou ? 



sc. I.] KING JOHN. 63 

France friend with England, what becomes of 

me ? 
Fellow, be gone : I cannot brook thy sight : 
This news hath made thee a most ugly man. 

Sal. What other harm have I, good lady, done, 
But spoke the harm that is by others done ? 

Const. Which harm within itself so heinous is 4° 
As it makes harmful all that speak of it. 

Arth. I do beseech you, madam, be content. 

Const. If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert 
grim, 
Ugly, and slanderous to thy mother's womb, 
Full of unpleasing blots and sightless stains, 
Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious, 
Patch'd with foul moles and eye-offending 

marks, 
I would not care, I then would be content; 
For then I should not love thee, no, nor thou 
Become thy great birth nor deserve a crown. 50 
But thou art fair; and, at thy birth, dear boy, 
Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great : 
Of Nature's, gifts thou mayst with lilies boast 
And with the half-blown rose. But Fortune, oh, 
She is corrupted, changed, and won from thee ; 
She adulterates hourly with thine Uncle John, 
And with her golden hand hath pluck'd on 

France 
To tread down fair respect of sovereignty, 
.And made his majesty the bawd to theirs. 
France is a bawd to Fortune and King John, 60 
That strumpet Fortune, that usurping John ! 
Tell me, thou fellow, is not France forsworn? 
Envenom him with words, or get thee gone 



64 KING JOHN. [act hi. 

And leave those woes alone which I alone 
Am bound to under-bear. 

Sal. ' Pardon me, madam, 

I may not go without you to the kings. 

Const. Thou mayst, thou shalt ; I will not go 
with thee : 
I will instruct my sorrows to be proud ; 
For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop. 
7° To me and to the state of my great grief 
Let kings assemble ; for my grief 's so great 
That no supporter but the huge firm earth 
Can hold it up : here I and sorrows sit ; 
Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it. 

[Seats herself on the ground. 

Enter King John, King Philip, Lewis, 
Blanch, Elinor, the Bastard, Austria, 
and Attendants. 

K. Phi. 'T is true, fair daughter; and this 
blessed dav 
Ever in France shall be kept festival : 
To solemnize this day the glorious sun 
Stays in his course and plays the alchemist, 
Turning with splendor of his precious eye 
80 The meager cloddy- earth to glittering gold : 
The yearly course that brings this day about 
Shall never see it but a holiday. 

Const. A wicked day, and not a holy day ! 

[Rising. 
What hath this day deserv'd ? what hath it done 
That it in golden letters should be set 
Among the high tides in the calendar ? 
Nay, rather turn this dav out of the week, 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 65 

This day of shame, oppression, perjury. 
Or,, if it must .stand still, let wives with child 
Pray that their burdens may not fall this day, 9° 
Lest that their hopes prodigiously be cross'd : 
But on this day let seamen fear no wreck'; 
No bargains break that are not this day made : 
This day, all things begun come to ill end, 
Yea, faith itself to hollow falsehood change ! 
K. Phi. By heaven, lady, you shall have no 
cause 
To curse the fair proceedings of this day : 
.Have I not pawn'd to you my majesty ? 

Const. You have beguil'd me with a counter- 
feit 
Resembling majesty, which, being touch'd and 100 

tried, 
Proves valueless: you are forsworn, forsworn ; 
You came in arms to spill mine enemies' blood, 
But now in arms you strengthen it with yours. 
The grappling vigor and rough frown of war 
Is cold in amity and painted peace, 
And our oppression hath made up this league. 
Arm, arm, you heavens, against these perjur'd 

kings ! 
A widow cries ; be husband to me, heavens ! 
Let not the hours of this ungodly day 
Wear out the day in peace; but, ere sunset, no 

Set armed discord 'twixt these perjured kings ! 
• Hear me, oh, hear me ! 

Aust. Lady Constance, peace ! 

Const. War ! war ! no peace ! peace is to me a 
war. 
Lymoges 3 O Austria ! thou dost shame 



66 KING JOHN. [act ill. 

That bloody spoil : thou slave, thou wretch, thou 

coward ! 
Thou little valiant, great in villany.! 
Thou ever strong upon the stronger side ! 
Thou Fortune's champion that dost never fight 
But when her humorous ladyship is by 
1 20 To teach thee safety ! thou art perjur'd too, 

And sooth'st up greatness. What a fool art 

thou, 
A ramping fool, to brag and stamp and swear 
Upon my party ! Thou cold-blooded slave, 
Hast thou not spoke like thunder on my side, 
Been sworn my soldier, bidding me depend 
Upon thy stars, thy fortune, and thy strength, 
And dost thou now fall over to my foes? 
Thou wear a lion's hide ! doff it for shame, . 
And han-g a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs. 
130 AusL Oh, that a man should speak those 
words to me ! 
Bast. And hang a calf's-skin on those rec- 
reant limbs. 
Aust. Thou darest not say so, villain, for thy 

life. 
Bast And hang a calf's-skin on those re- 
creant limbs. 
K. John. We like not this ; thou dost forget 
thyself. 

Etiter Pandulph. 

K. Phi. Here comes the holy legate of the 

pope. 
Pand% Hail, you anointed deputies of heaven ! 
To thee, King John, my holy errand is. 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 67 

I Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal, 

And from Pope Innocent the legate here, 

Do in his name religiously demand 140 

Why thou against the church, our holy mother, 

So willfully dost spurn ; and force perforce 

Keep Stephen Langton, chosen archbishop 

Of Canterbury, from that holy see ? 

This, in our foresaid holy father's name, 

Pope Innocent, I do demand of thee. 

K.John. What earthy name to interroga- 
tories 
Can task the free breath of a sacred king: ? 
Thou canst not, cardinal, devise a name 
So slight, unworthy, and ridiculous, 15° 

To charge me to an answer, as the pope. 
Tell him this tale ; and from the mouth of Eng- 
land 
Add thus much more, that no Italian priest 
Shall tithe or toll in our dominions ; 
But as we, under heaven, are supreme head, 
So under Him that great supremacy, 
Where we do reign, we will alone uphold, 
Without th' assistance of a mortal hand : 
So tell the pope, all reverence set apart 
To him and his usurp'd authority. 160 

K. Phi. Brother of England, you blaspheme 

in this. 
K.John. Though you and all the kings of 
Christendom 
Are led so grossly by this meddling priest, 
Dreading the curse that money may buy out ; 
And by the merit of vile gold, dross, dust, 
Purchase corrupted' pardon of a man, 



68 RING JOHN. [act hi. 

Who in that sale sells pardon from himself,— 
Though you and all the rest, so grossly led, 
This juggling witchcraft .with revenue cherish, 
17° Yet I alone, alone do me oppose 

Against the pope and count his friends my foes. 

Pand. Then, by the lawful power that I have, 
Thou shalt stand curs'd and excommunicate: 
And blessed shall he be that doth revolt 
From his allegiance to an heretic ; 
And meritorious shall that hand be call'd, • 
Canonized and worship'd as a saint. 
That takes away by any secret course 
Thy hateful life. 

Const. Oh, lawful let it be 

l8oThat I have room with Rome to curse awhile! 
Good father cardinal, cry thou ameii 
To my keen curses; for without my wrong 
There is no tongue hath power to curse him right. 

Pand. There 's law and warrant, lady, for my 
curse. 

Const. And for mine too: when law can do 
t no right, 
Let it be lawful that law bar no wrong: 
Law cannot give my child his kingdom here, 
For he that holds Ins kingdom holds the law; 
Therefore, since law itself is perfect, wrong, 
190 How can the law forbid my tpngue to curse ? 

Pane/. Philip of France, on peril of a curse, 
Let go the hand of that arch-heretic ; 
And raise the power of France upon his head, 
Unless he do submit himself to Rome. 

Eli. Look'st thou pale, France ? do not let go 
thy hand. • 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 69 

Const. Look to that, devil ; lest that France 
repent, 
And, by disjoining hands, hell lose a soul. 
Anst. King Philip, listen to the cardinal. 
Bast. And hang a calf's-skin on his recreant 

limbs. 
Aust. Well, ruffian, I must pocket up these 200 
wrongs, 
Because — 

Bast. Your breeches best may earn them. 
A'. John. Philip, what say'st thou to the car- 
dinal? 
Const. What should he say, but as the car- 
dinal? 
Lew. Bethink you, father; for the difference 
Is purchase of a heavy curse from Rome, 
Or the light loss of England for a friend : 
Forego the easier. 
Blanch. That 's the curse of Rome. 

Const. O Lewis, stand fast ! the devil tempts 
thee here 
In likeness of a new untrimmed bride. 
Blanch. The Lady Constance speaks not from 
her faith, 
But from her need. 

Const. Oh, if thou grant my need, 210 

Which only lives but by the death of faith, 
That need must needs infer this principle, 
That faith would live again by death of need. 
Oh, then, tread down my need, and faith mounts 

up; 
Keep my need up, and faith is trodden down ! 



7 o KING JOHN. [act hi. 

K.Johiu The king is moved, and answers 

not to this. 
Const. Oh, be removed from him, and answer 

well ! 
Aust. Do so, King Philip; hang no more in 
doubt. 
220 Bast. Hang nothing but a calfs-skin, most 
sweet lout. 
K. Phi. I am perplex'd, and know not what 

to sav. 
Pant/. What canst thou say but will perplex 
thee more, 
If thou stand excommunicate and curs'd? 
K. Phi. Good reverend father, make my person 
yours, 
And tell me how you would bestow yourself. 
This royal hand and mine are newly knit, 
And the conjunction of our inward souls 
Married in league, coupled and link'd together 
With all religious strength of sacred vows; 
230 The latest breath 'that gave the sound of words 
Was deep-sworn faith, peace, amity, true love 
Between our kingdoms and our royal selves; 
And even before this truce, but new before, 
No longer than we .well could wash our hands 
To clap this royal bargain up of peace, 
Heaven knows, they were besmear'd and over- 

stain'd 
With slaughter's pencil, where revenge did paint 
The fearful difference of incensed kings : 
And shall these hands, so lately purg'd of blood, 
240 So newly join'd in love, so strong in both, 
Unyoke this seizure and this kind regreet? 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 71 

Play fast and loose with faith ? so jest with 

heaven, 
Make such unconstant children of ourselves 
As now again to snatch our palm from palm, 
Unswear faith sworn, and on the marriage-bed 
Of smiling peace to march a bloody host, 
And make a riot on the gentle brow 
Of true sincerity? O holy sir, 
My reverend father, let it not be so! 
Out of your grace, devise, ordain, impose 250 

Some gentle order; and then we shall be blest 
To do your pleasure and continue friends. 

Paiid. All form is formless, order orderless, 
Save what is opposite to England's love. 
Therefore to arms! be champion of our church, 
Or let the church, our mother, breathe her curse, 
A mother's curse, on her revolting son. 
France, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue, 
A chafed lion by the mortal paw, 
A fasting tiger safer by the tooth, 260 

Than keep in peace that hand which thou dost 
hold. 

K. Phi. I may disjoin my hand, but not my 
faith. 

Pand. So mak'st thou faith an enemy to faith ; 
And like a civil war set'st oath to oath, 
Thy tongue against thy tongue. Oh, let thy vow 
First made to heaven, first be to heaven per- 
form 'd, 
That is, to be the champion of our church ! 
What since thou sworest is sworn against thyself 
And may not be performed by thyself, 
For that which thou hast sworn to do amiss 270 



72 KING JOHN. [act hi. 

Is not amiss when it is truly done, 
And being not done, where doing tends to ill, 
The truth is then most done not doing it : 
The better act of purposes mistook 
Is to mistake again ; though indirect, 
Yet indirection thereby grows direct, 
And falsehood falsehood cures, as fire cools fire 
VVithin the scorched veins of one new-burn'd. 
It is religion that doth make vows kept; 
280 But thou hast sworn against religion, 

By what thou swearst against the thing thou 

swear'st, 
And mak'st an oath the surety for thy truth 
Against an oath : the truth thou art unsure 
To swear, swears only not to be forsworn; 
Else what a mockery should it be to swear! 
But thou dost swear only to be forsworn ; 
And most forsworn, to keep what thou dost 

swear. 
Therefore thy later vows against thy first 
Is in thyself rebellion to thyself; 
290 And better conquest never canst thou make 
Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts 
Against these giddy, loose suggestions: 
Upon which better part our prayers come in, 
If thou vouchsafe them. But, if not, then know 
The peril of our curses li<.;ht on three 
So heavy as thou shalt not shake them off, 
But in despair die under their black weight. 

Aust. Rebellion, flat rebellion.! 

Bast : Will 't not be ? 

Will not a calf's-skin stop that mouth of thine? 

Lew. Father, to arms! 



sc. i.] KING JOHN, 73 

Blanch. Upon thy wedding-day ? 3°° 

Against the blood that thou hast married ? 
What, shall our feast be kept with slaughter'd 

men ? 
Shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums, 
Clamors ol hell, be measures to our pomp? 
O husband, hear me ! ay, alack, how new 
Is husband in my mouth ! even for that name, 
Which till this time my tongue did ne'er pro- 
nounce, 
Upon my knee I beg, go not to arms 
Against mine uncle. 

Const. Oh, upon my knee, 

Made hard with kneeling, I do pray to thee, 310 
Thou virtuous Dauphin, alter not the doom 
Forethought by heaven ! 
Blanch, Now shall I see thy love : what 
motive may 
Be stronger with thee than the name of wife? 
Const. That which upholdeth him that thee 
upholds, 
His honor: oh, thine honor, Lewis, thine honor ! 
Lew, I muse your majesty doth seem so cold, 
When such profound respects do pull you on. 
Pand. I will denounce a curse upon his head. 
A'. Phi, Thou shalt not need. England, I'll 

fall from thee. 3 2 ° 

Const. O fair return of banish'd majesty ! 
Eli. O foul revolt of French inconstancy ! 
K. John. France, thou shalt rue this hour 

within this hour. 
Bast. Old Time the clock-setter, that bald 
sexton Time, 



74 KING JOHN. [act hi. 

Is it as he will ? well then, France shall rue. 
Blanch. The sun 's o'ercast with blood : fair 
day, adieu ! 
Which is the side that I must go withal ? 
I am with both : each army hath a hand ; 
And, in their rage, I having hold of both, 
330 They whirl asunder and dismember me. 

Husband, I cannot pray that thou mayst win ; 
Uncle, I needs must pray that thou mayst lose ; 
Father, I may not wish the fortune thine; 
Grandam, 1 will not wish thy wishes thrive : 
Whoever wins, on that side shall I lose; 
Assured loss before the match be play'd. 

Lew. Lady, with me, with me thy fortune 

lies. 
Blanch. There where my fortune lives, there 

my life dies. 
K. John. Cousin, go draw our puissance to- 
gether. [Exit Bast. 
340 France, I am burn'd up with inflaming wrath; 
A rage whose heat hath this condition, 
That nothing can allay, nothing but blood, 
The blood, and dearest-valued blood, of France. 
K. Phi. Thy rage shall burn thee up, and 
thou shalt turn 
To ashes, ere our blood shall quench that fire : 
Look to thyself, thou art in jeopardy. 
K. John. No more than he that threats. To 
arms let 's hie ! [Exeunt. 



sc. ii, ill.] KING JOHN. 75 

Scene II. The same. Plains near Angz'ers. 

Alarums, excursions. Enter the BASTARD, with 
Austria's head. 

Bast. Now, by my life, this day grows 

wondrous hot ; 
Some airy devil hovers in the sky 
And pours down mischief. Austria's head lie 

there, 
While Philip breathes. 

Enter King John, Arthur, and Hubert. 

K. John. Hubert, keep this boy. Philip, 
make up : 
My mother is assailed in our tent, 
And ta'en, I fear. 

Bast. My lord, I rescued her ; 

Her highness is in safety, fear you not : 
But on, my liege; for very little pains 
Will bring this labor to an happy end. [Exeunt. 

Scene III. The same. 

Alarums, excursions, retreat. Enter King John, 
Elinor, Arthur, the Bastard, Hubert, 
and Lords. 

K. John. [ To Elinor] So shall it be ; your 

grace shall stay behind 
So strongly guarded. [To Arthur] Cousin, look 

not sad : 
Thy grandam loves thee ; and thy uncle will 
As dear be to thee as thy father was. 



76 KING JOHN. [act hi. 

Arth. Oh, this will make my mother die with 

grief ! 
A'. 'John. [To the Bastard\ Cousin, away 
for England ! haste before : 
And, ere our coming, see thou shake the bags 
Of hoarding abbots ; set at liberty 
Imprison'd angels : the fat ribs of peace 
IoMust by the hungry now be fed upon : 
Use our commission in his utmost force. 

Bast. Bell, book, and candle shall not drive 
me back, 
When gold and silver becks me to come on. 
I leave your highness. Grandam, I will pray, — 
If ever I remember to be holy, — 
For your fair safety ; so, I kiss your hand. 
Eli. Farewell, gentle cousin. 
K. John. Coz, farewell. [Exit Bastard. 

Eli. Come hither, little kinsman ; hark, a 

word. 
K. John. Come hither, Hubert. O my gentle 
Hubert, 
20 We owe thee much ! within this wall of flesh 
There' is a soul counts thee her creditor 
And with advantage means to pay thy love: 
And, my good friend, thy voluntary oath 
Lives in this bosom^ dearly cherished. 
Give me thy hand. I had a thing to say, 
But I will lit it with some better time. 
By heaven, Hubert, I 'm almost ashamed 
To say what good respect I have of thee. 
Huh. - I am much bounden to your majesty. 
30 K. John. Good friend, thou hast no cause to 
say so yet, 



sc. in.] KING JOHN. 77 

But thou shalt have ; and, creep time ne'er so 

slow, 
Yet it shall come for me to do thee good. 
I had a thing to say, — but let it go : 
The sun is in the heaven, and the proud day, 
Attended with the pleasures of the world, 
Is all too wanton and too full. of gawds 
To give me audience : if the midnight bell 
Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth, 
Sound on into the drowsy race of night ; 
If this same were a- churchyard where we stand, 4° 
And thou possessed with a thousand wrongs ; 
Or if that surly spirit, melancholy, 
Had bak'd thy blood and made it heavy, thick, 
Which else runs tickling up and down the veins, 
Making that idiot, laughter, keep men's eyes 
And strain their cheeks to idle merriment, 
A passion hateful to my purposes ; 
Or if that thou couldst see me without eyes, 
Hear me without thine ears, and make reply 
Without a tongue, using conceit alone, 50 

Without eyes, ears, and harmful sound of 

words ; — 
Then, in despite of brooded watchful day, 
I would into thy bosom pour my thoughts. 
But, ah, I will not ! yet I love thee well ; 
And, by my troth, I think thou lov'st me well. 

Hub. So well that what you bid me under- 
take, 
Though that my death were adjunct to my act, 
By heaven, I 'd d' it. 

K. John. Do not I know thou wouldst? 

Good Hubert, Hubert, Hubert, throw thine eye 



78 KING JOHN. fACT in. 

60 On yon young boy : I '11 tell thee what, my friend, 
He is a very serpent in my way ; 
And, wheresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread, 
He lies before me : dost thou understand me? 
Thou art his keeper. 

Hub. And I '11 keep him so 

That he shall not offend your majesty. 

K. John. Death. 

Hub. My lord ? 

K. John. A grave. 

Hub. He shall not live. 

K. John. Enough. 

I could be merry now. Hubert, I love thee ; 
Well, I '11 not say what I intend for thee : 
Remember. — Madam, fare you well : 
70 I '11 send those powers o'er to your majesty. 

Eli. -My blessing go with thee ! 

K. John. For England, cousin, go : 

Hubert shall be your man, attend on you 
With all true duty. On toward Calais, ho ! 

• [Exeunt. 

Scene IV. The same. The French King's 
tent. 

Enter King Philip, Lewis, Pandulph, and 
Attendants. 

K. Phi. So, by a roaring tempest on the flood, 
A whole armado of convicted sail 
Is scatter'd and disjoin'd from fellowship. 

Panel. Courage and comfort ! all shall yet go 
Well. 



sc. iv.] KING JOHN. 79 

K. Phi. What can go well when we have run 
so ill? 
Are we not beaten ? Is not Angiers lost ? 
Arthur ta'en prisoner ? divers dear friends slain ? 
And bloody England into England gone, 
O'erbearing interruption, spite of France ? 

Lew. What he hath won, that hath he for- 10 
tified : 
So hot a speed with such advice dispos'd, 
Such temperate order in so fierce a cause 
Doth want example : who hath read or heard 
Of any kindred action like to this ? 

K. Phi. Well could I bear that England had 
this praise, 
So we could find some pattern of our shame. 

Enter Constance. 

Look, who comes here ! a grave unto a soul ; 

Holding the eternal spirit, against her will, 

In the vile prison of afflicted breath. 

I prithee, lady, go away with me. 20 

Coiist. Lo, now ! now see the issue of your 
peace, 

K. Phi. Patience, good lady ! comfort, gentle 
Constance ! 

Const. No, I defy all counsel, all redress, 
But that which ends all counsel, true redress, 
Death, death. O amiable, lovely death ! 
Thou odoriferous stench ! sound rottenness ! 
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night, 
Thou hate and terror to prosperity, 
And I will kiss thy detestable bones 
And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows 30 



8o KING JOHN. [act hi. 

And ring these fingers with thy household 

worms 
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust 
And be a carrion monster like thyself : 
Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smilest, 
And buss thee as thy wife. Misery's love, 
Oh, cometo me ! 

A'. Phi. O fair affliction, peace ! 

Const. No, no, I will not, having breath to cry : 
Oh, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth ! 
Then with a passion would I shake the world, 
40 And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy 
Which cannot hear a lady's feeble voice, 
Which scorns a modern invocation. 

Pand. Lady, you utter madness, and not 
sorrow. 

Const. . Thou art not holy to belie me so. 
I am not mad : this hair I tear is mine; 
My name is Constance ; I was Geffrey's wife; 
Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost : 
I am not mad : I. would to heaven I were ! 
For then 'tis like I should forget myself: 
50 Oh, i'f I could, what grief should I forget ! 
Preach some philosophy to make me mad, 
And thou shalt be canoniz'd, cardinal ; 
For being not mad but sensible of grief, 
My reasonable part produces reason 
How I may be deliver'd of tftese woes, 
And teaches me to kill or hang myself: 
If I were mad, I should forget my son, 
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he : 
I am not mad ; too well, too well I feel 
60 The different plague of each calamity. 



BC. IV.] KING JOHN. 81 

K. Phi Bind up those tresses. Oh, what 

love I note 
In the fair multitude of those her hairs ! 
Where but by chance a silver drop hath fallen, 
Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends 
Do glue themselves in sociable grief, 
Like true, inseparable, faithful loves, 
Sticking together in calamiiy. 
Const. To England, if you will. 
A'. Phi. Bind up your hairs. 

Const. Yes, that 1 will ; and wherefore will I 

do it? 
I tore them from their bonds and cried aloud, 70 
"Oh, that these hands could so redeem my son 
As they have given these hairs their liberty !" 
But now I envy at their liberty," 
And will again commit them to their bonds, 
Because my poor child is a prisoner. 
And, father cardinal, I have heard you say 
That we shall see and know our friends in 

heaven : 
If that be true, I shall see my boy again ; 
For since the birth of Cain, the first male child, 
To him that did but yesterday suspire, 80 

There was not such a gracious creature born. 
But now will canker sorrow eat my bud 
And chase the native beauty from his cheek, 
And he will look as hollow as a ghost, 
As dim and meager as an ague's fit, 
And so he '11 die ; and, rising so again, 
When I shall meet him in the court of heaven 
I shall not know him : therefore never, never 
Must I behold my pretty Arthur more. 



82 KING JOHN. [act hi. 

90 Pand. You hold too heinous a respect of 
grief. 
Const. He talks to me that never had a son. 
K. Phi. You are as fond of grief as of your 

child. 
Const. Grief fills the room up of my absent 
child, 
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, 
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
Remembers me of all his gracious parts, . 
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; 
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief ? 
Fare you well : had you such a loss as I, 
100 1 could give better comfort than you do. 
I will not keep this form upon my head, 
When there is such disorder in my wit. 
O Lord !' my boy, my Arthur, my fair son ! 
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world ! 
My widow comfort, and my sorrows' cure ! 

[Exit. 
K. Phi. I fear some outrage, and I '11 follow 
her. [Exit. 

Lew. There's nothing in this world can make 
me joy:" 
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale 
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man ; 
no And bitter shame hath spoiTd the sweet world's 
taste, 
That it yields naught but shame and bitterness. 
Pand. Before the curing of a strong disease, 
Even in the instant of repair and health, 
The lit is strongest ; evils that take leave 
On their departure most of all show evil : 



sc. iv.] KING JOHN. 83 

What have you lost by losing of this day ?. 

Lew. All days of glory, joy, and happiness. 

Pand. If you had won it, certainly you had. 
No, no ; when Fortune means to men most good, 
She looks upon them with a threatening eye. 120 
'T is strange to think how much King John hath 

lost 
In this which he accounts so clearly won : 
Are not you griev*d that Arthur is his prisoner? 

Lew. As heartily as he is glad he hath him. 

Pand. Your mind is all as youthful as your 
blood. 
Now hear me speak with a prophetic spirit ; 
For e'en the breath of what I mean to speak 
Shall blow each dust, each straw, each little rub, 
Out of the path which shall directly lead 
Thy foot to England's throne ; and therefore 130 

mark. 
John hath seized Arthur ; and it cannot be 
That, whiles warm life plays in that infant's veins, 
The misplac'd John should entertain an hour, 
One minute, nay, one quiet breath of rest. 
A scepter snatch'd with an unruly hand 
Must be as boisterously maintained as gain'd ; 
And he that stands upon a slippery place 
Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up : 
That John may stand, then Arthur needs must 

fall; 
So be it, for it cannot be but so. 140 

Lew. But what shall I gain by young Ar- 
thur's fall ? 

Pand. You, in the right of Lady Blanch your 
wife, 



84 KING JOHN. [act hi. 

May then make all the claim that Arthur did. 
Lew. And lose it, life and all, as Arthur did. 
Pa7id. How green you are and fresh in this 
old world ! 
John lays you plots; the times conspire with you ; 
For he that steeps his safety in true blood 
Shall find but bloody safety and untrue. 
This act so evilly born shall cool the hearts 
150 Of all his people and freeze up' their zeal, 

That none so small advantage shall step forth 
To check his reign, but they will cherish it; 
No natural exhalation in the sky, 
No scope of nature, no disteinper'd day, 
No common wind, no customed event, 
But they will pluck away his natural cause 
And call them meteors, prodigies, and signs, 
Abortive's, presages, and tongues of heaven, 
Plainly denouncing vengeance upon John. 
160 Lew. May be he will not touch voting Arthur's 
life, 
But hold himself"safe in his prisonment. 

Land. Oh, sir, when he shall hear of your 
approach, 
If that young Arthur be not gone already, 
Even at that news he dies ; and then the hearts 
Of all his people shall revolt from .him 
And kiss the lips of unacquainted change 
And pick strong matter of revolt and wrath 
Out of the bloody fingers' ends of John. 
Methinks I see this hurly all on foot : 
170 And, oh, what better matter breeds for you 

Than I '.have named! The bastard Faulcon- 
bridge 



SC. I.] KING JOHN. 85 

Is now in England, ransacking the church, 

Offending charity : if but a dozen French 

Were there in arms, they would be as a call 

To train ten thousand English to their side, 

Gr, as a little snow, tumbled about, 

Anon becomes a mountain. O noble Dauphin, 

Go with me to the king: 'tis wonderful 

What may be wrought out of their discontent, 

Now that their souls are topful of offense. 180 

For England go: I will whet on the kfng. 

Lew. Strong reasons make strong actions : 
let us go : 
If you say ay, the king will not say no. {Exeunt, 



ACT IV. 

SCENE I. A room in a eastle. 

Enter Hubert and Executioners. 

Hub. Heat me these irons hot ; and look 
thou stand 
Within the arras: when I strike my foot 
Upon the bosom of the ground, rush forth. 
And bind the boy which you shall find with me 
Fast to the chair : be heedful : hence and watch. 
First Ex. I hope your warrant will bear out 

the deed. 
Hub. Uncleanly scruples! fear not you : look 
to 't. [Exeunt Executioners. 

Young lad, come forth ; I have to say with you. 

Enter Arthur. 

Arth. Good morrow, Hubert. 



86 KING JOHN. [act iv. 

Hub. Good morrow, little prince. 

10 Arth. As little prince, having so great a title 
To be more prince, as may be. Yon are sad. 
Hub. Indeed, I have been merrier. 
Arth. Mercy on me! 

Meihinks no body should be sad but I : 
Yet I remember, when I was in France, 
Young gentlemen would be as sad as night 
Only for wantonness. By my Christendom, 
So I were out of prison and kept sheep, . 
I should be as merry as the day is long ; 
And so I would be here, but that I doubt 
20 My uncle practices more harm to me : 
He is afraid of me and I of him : 
Is it my fault that I was Geffrey's son ? 
No, indeed, is 't not ; and I would to heaven 
I were your son, so vou would love me, Hubert. 
Hub. [Aside] If I talk to him, with his inno- 
cent prate 
He will awake my mercy which lies dead : 
Therefore I will .be sudden and dispatch. 

Arth. Are you sick, Hubert ? you look pale 
- to-day : 
In sooth, I would you were a little sick 
30 That I might sit all night and watch with you : 
I warrant I love you more than you do me. 
Hub. [Aside] His words do take possession of 
my bosom. * 

Read here, young Arthur. [Showing a paper. 

[Aside] How now, foolish rheum ! 
Turning dispiteous torture out of door ! 
I must be brief, lest resolution drop 
Out at mine eyes in tender, womanish tears. 



sc. I.] KING JOHN. 87 

Can you not read it ? is it not fair writ ? 

Arth. Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect : 
Must you with hot irons burn out both mine 
eyes ? 

Hub. Young boy, I must. 

Arth. And will you ? 

Hub. And I will. \o 

Arth. Have you the heart ? When your 
head did but ache, 
I knit my handkercher about your brows, — 
The best I had, a princess wrought it me, — 
And I did never ask it you again ; 
And with my hand at midnight held your head, 
And, like the watchful minutes to the hour, 
Still and anon cheer'd up the heavy time, 
Saying, "What lack you?" and "Where lies 

your grief?" 
Or, " What good love may I perform for you ?" 
Many a poor man's son would have lain still 5° 
And ne'er have spoke a loving word to you ; 
But you at your sick service had a prince. 
Nay, you may think my love was crafty love 
And call it cunning: do, an if you will : 
If heaven be pleased that you must use me ill, 
Why then you must. Will you put out mine 

eyes ? 
These eyes that never did nor never shall 
So much as frown on you. 

Hub. I have sworn to do it ; 

And with hot irons must I burn them out. 

Arth. Ah, none but in this iron age would 60 
do it ! 
The iron of itself, though heat red-hot, 



8S KING JOHN. [act iv. 

Approaching near these eyes, would drink my 

tears 
And quench his fiery indignation 
Even in the matter of mine innocence; 
Nay, after that, consume away in rust, 
But for containing fire to harm mine eye. 
Are you more stubborn-hard than hammer'd iron? 
An if an angel should have come to me 
And told me Hubert should put out mine eyes, 
70 I would not have believed him, — no tongue but 
Hubert's. 
Hub. Come forth. [Stamps. 

Re-enter Executioners, with a cord, irons, etc. 

Do as I bid you do. 

Arth. Oh, save me, Hubert, save me! my 
eyes are out 
Even with the fierce looks of these bloody men. 
Hub. Give me the iron, I say, and bind him 

here. 
Arth. Alas, what need you be so boisterous- 
rough ? 
I will hot struggle, I will stand stone-still. 
For heaven sake, Hubert, let me not be bound ! 
Nay, hear me, Hubert, drive these men away, 
So And I will sit as quiet as a lamb ; 

I will not stir nor wince nor speak a word 
Nor look upon the iron angenv : 
Thrust but these men away, and I '11 forgive you, 
Whatever torment you do put me to. 

Hub. ■ Go, stand within ; let me alone with him. 

.First Ex. I am best pleas'd to be from such 

a deed. {Exeunt Executioners. 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 89 

Arth. Alas, I then have chid away my friend ! 
He hath a stern look but a gentle heart : 
Let him come back that his compassion may 
Give life to yours. 

Hub. Come, boy, prepare yourself. 90 

Arth. Is there no remedy ? 

Hub. None, but to lose your eyes. 

Arth. O heaven, that there were but a mote 
in yours, 
A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair, 
Any annoyance in that precious sense! 
Then, feeling what small things are boisterous 

there, 
Your vile intent must needs seem horrible. 

Hub. Is this your promise? go to, hold your 
tongue. 

Arth. Hubert, the utterance of a* brace of 
tongues 
Must needs want pleading for a pair of eyes : 
Let me not hold my tongue, let me not, Hubert ; 100 
Or. Hubert, if you will, cut out my torgue, 
So I may keep mine eyes: oh, spare mine eyes, 
Though to no use but still to look on you ! 
Lo, by my troth, the instrument is cold 
And would not harm me. 

Hub. I can heat it, boy. 

Arth. No, in good sooth ; the fire is dead 
with grief, 
Being create for comfort, to be us'd 
In undeserv'd extremes: see else yourself; 
There is no malice in this burning coal ; 
The breath of heaven hath blown his spirit out 110 
And strew'd repentant ashes on his head. 



90 KING JOHN. [act iv. 

Hub. But with my breath I can revive it, boy. 

Arth. An if you do, you will but make it blush 

And glow with shame of your proceedings, 

Hubert: 
Nay, it perchance will sparkle in your eyes; 
And, like a dog that is compell'd to fight, 
Snatch at his master that doth tarre him on. 
All things that you should use to do me wrong 
Deny their office : only you do lack 
I2oThat mercy which fierce fire and iron extends, 
Creatures of note for mercy-lacking uses. 

Hub. Well, see to live ; I will not touch thine 
eye 
For all the treasure that thine uncle owes : 
Yet am I sworn and I did purpose, boy. 
With this same very iron to burn them out. 
Arth. . Oh, now you look like Hubert ! all this 
while 
You were disguised. 

Hub. Peace; no more. Adieu. 

Your uncle must. not know but you are dead ; 
I '11 fill these dogged spies with false reports : 
13° And,- pretty child, sleep doubtless and secure 
That Hubert, for the wealth of all the world, 
Will not offend thee. 

Arth. O heaven ! I thank you, Hubert. 

Hub. Silence; no more: go ctosely in with 
me : * 

Much danger do I undergo for thee. [Exeunt. 



SC. ii.] KING JOHN. 91 

Scene II. King John's palace. 

Enter King John, Pembroke, Salisbury, 
and other Lords. 

K. Jo/in. Here once again we sit, once again 
crown'd, 
And look'd upon, I hope, with cheerful eyes. 

Pem. This "once again," but that your high- 
ness pleased, 
Was once superfluous : you were crown'd before, 
And that high royalty was ne'er pluck'd off; 
The faiths of men ne'er stained with revolt ; 
Fresh expectation troubled not the land 
With any long'd-for change or better state. 

Sal. Therefore, to be possess'd with double 
pomp, 
To guard a title that was rich before, 10 

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 
To throw a perfume on the violet, 
To smooth the ice, or add another hue 
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light 
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish 
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. 

Pem. But that your royal pleasure must be 
done, 
This act is as an ancient tale new told, 
And in the last repeating troublesome, 
Being urged at a time unseasonable. 20 

Sal. In this the antique and well noted face 
Of plain old form is much disfigured; 
And, like a shifted wind unto a sail, 
It makes the course of thoughts to fetch about, 
Startles and frights consideration, 



92 ' KING JOHN. [act iv. 

Makes sound opinion sick and truth suspected, 
For putting on so new a fashion'd robe. 
Pern. When workmen strive to do better 
than well, 
They do confound their skill in covetousness ; 
30 And oftentimes excusing of a fault 

Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse, 
As patches set upon a little breach 
Discredit more in hiding of the fault 
Than did the fault before it was so patch 'd. 
Sal. To this effect, before you were new 
crown'd, 
We breath'd our counsel : but it pleas'd your 

highness 
To overbear 't, and we are all well pleas'd, 
Since all and every part of what we would 
Doth make a stand at what your highness will. 
40 K. John. Some reasons of this double coro- 
nation 
I have possess'd you with and think them strong; 
And more, more strong, when lesser is. my fear, 
I shall indue you with: meantime but ask 
What you would have reform'd that is not well, 
And well shall you perceive how willingly 
I will both hear and grant you your requests. 
Pern. Then I,— ^as one that am the tongue of 
these 
To sound the purposes of all tbteir hearts, 
Both for myself and them, but, chief of all, 
50 Your safety, for the which myself and them 
Bend their best studies, — heartily request 
Th' enfranchisement of Arthur; whose restraint 
Doth move the murmuring lips of discontent 



sc. ii.] KING JOHN. 93 

To break into this dangerous argument,— 

If what in rest you have in right you hold, 

Why then your fears, which, as they say, attend 

The steps of wrong, should move you to mew up 

Your tender kinsman and to choke his days 

With barbarous ignorance and deny his youth 

The rich advantage of good exercise. 60 

That the time's enemies may not have this 

To grace occasions, let it be our suit 

That you have bid us ask his liberty; 

Which for our goods we do no further ask 

Than whereupon our weal, on you depending, 

Counts it your weal he have his liberty. 

Enter Hubert. 

K. John. Let it be so : I do commit his youth 
To your direction. Hubert, what news with you ? 

[ Taking him apart. 

Pern. This is the man should do the bloody 
deed ; 
He show'd his warrant to a friend of mine : 70 

The image of a wicked, heinous fault 
Lives in his. eye; that close aspect of his 
Does show the mood of a much troubled breast ; 
And I do fearfully believe 't is done, 
What we so fear'd he had a charge to do. 

Sal. The color of the king doth come and go 
Between his purpose and his conscience, 
Like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set : 
His passion is so ripe it needs must break. 

Pern. And, when it breaks, I fear will issue 80 
thence 
The foul corruption of a sweet child's death. 



94 KING JOHN. [act IV. 

K. John. We cannot hold mortality's strong 
hand : 
Good lords, although my will to give is living, 
The suit which you demand is gone and dead : 
He tells us Arthur is deceas'd to night. 

Sal. Indeed we fear'd his sickness was past 

cure. 
Pem. Indeed we heard how near his death he 
was 
Before the child himself felt he was sick :. 
This must be answer'd either here or hence. 
9° K. John. Why do you bend such solemn 
brows on me ? 
Think you I bear the shears of destiny ? 
Have I commandment on the pulse of life? 

Sal. It is apparent foul-play ; and 't is shame 
That greatness should so grossly offer it : 
So thrive it in your game ! and so, farewell. 
Pem. Stay yet, Lord Salisbury; I '11 go with 
thee 
And find the inheritance of this poor child, 
His little kingdom of a forced grave. 
That -blood which owed the breadth of all this 
isle, 
ioo Three foot of it doth hold : bad world the while ! 
This must not be thus borne : this will break out 
To all our sorrows, and ere long I doubt. 

[Exeunt Lords. 
K. John. They burn in indignation. I 
repent : 
There is no sure foundation set on blood, 
No certain life achiev'd by others' death. 



sc. II. J KING JOHN. 95 

E?iter a Messenger. 

A fearful eye thou hast: where is that blood 

That I have seen inhabit in those cheeks ? 

So foul a sky clears not without a storm : 

Pour down thy weather : how goes all in France ? 
Mess. From France to England. Never such no 
a power 

For any foreign preparation 

Was levied in the body of a land. 

The copy of your speed is learn'd by them ; 

For when you should be told they do prepare, 

The tidings comes that they are all aniv'd. 
K. John. Oh, where hath our intelligence 
been drunk ? 

Where hath it slept ? Where is my mother's 
care, 

That such an army could be drawn in France, 

And she not hear of it ? 

Mess. My liege, her ear 

Is stopp'd with dust ; the first of April died 120 

Your noble mother : and, as I hear, my lord, 

The Lady Constance in a frenzy died 

Three days before : but this from rumor's tongue 

I idly heard ; if true or false I know not. 
K. John. Withhold thy speed, dreadful occa- 
sion ! 

Oh, make a league with me. till I have pleas'd 

My discontented peers ! What ! mother dead ! 

How wildly then walks my estate in France ! 

Under whose conduct came those powers of 
France 

That thou for truth giv'st out are landed here? *3° 
Mess. Under the Dauphin. 



96 KING JOHN. [act. iv. 

K. Jo/in. Thou hast made me giddy 

With these ill tidings. 

Enter the Bastard and Peter of Pomfret. 

Now, what says the world 
To your proceedings ? do not seek to stuff 
My head with more ill news, for it is full. 

Bast. But if you be afeard to hear the worst, 
Then let the worst unheard fall on your head. 
K. John. Bear with me, cousin ; for- I was 
amaz'd 
Under the tide : but now I breathe again 
Aloft the flood, and can give audience 
140 To any tongue, speak it of what it will. 

Bast. How I have sped among the clergymen, 
The sums I have collected shall express. 
But, as I travel'd hither through the land, 
I find the people strangely fantasied ; 
Possess'd with rumors, full of idle dreams, 
Not knowing what they fear, but full of fear: 
And here's a prophet, that I brought with me 
From forth the streets of Pomfret, whom I found 
With many hundreds treading on his heels : 
1 5° To whom he" sung, in rude harsh-sounding 
rhymes, 
That, ere the next Ascension-day at noon, 
Your highness should deliver up^your crown. 
K. John. Thou idle dreamer, wherefore didst 

thou so ? 
Peter. Foreknowing that the truth will fall 

out so. 
K. John. Hubert, away with him ; imprison 
him : 



sc. ii.] KING JOHN. 97 

And on that day at noon, whereon he says 

I shall yield .up my crown, let him be hang'd. 

Deliver him to safety ; and return, 

For I must use thee. [Exit Hubert with Peter. • 

O my gentle cousin, 
Hear'st thou the news abroad, who are arriv'd ? 16c 

Bast. The French, my lord ; men's mouths 
are full of it : 
Besides, I met Lord Bigot and Lord Salisbury, 
With eyes as red as new-enkindled fire, 
And others more, going to seek the grave 
Of Arthur, whom they say is kilPd to-night 
On your suggestion. 

K. John. . Gentle kinsman, go, 

And thrust thyself into their companies : 
I have a way to win their loves again ; 
Bring them before me. 

Bast. I will seek them out. 

K. John. Nay, but make haste; the better 170 
foot before. 
Oh, let me have no subject enemies, 
When adverse foreigners affright my towns 
With dreadful pomp of stout invasion ! 
Be Mercury, set feathers to thy heels, 
And fly like thought from them to me again. 

Bast. The spirit of the time shall teach me 
speed. [Exit. 

K. Jo/in. Spoke like a sprightful, noble gen- 
tleman. 
Go after him ; for he perhaps shall need 
Some messenger betwixt me and the peers ; 
And be thou he. 

Mess. With all my heart, my liege. [Exit. 180 



98 KING JOHN. ]ac . iv. 

K. John. My mother dead ! 
Re-ejiter Hubert. 

, Hub. My lord, they say five moons were seen 

to-night; 
Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about 
The other four in wondrous motion. 
K. John. Five moons ! 

Hub. Old men and beldams in the streets 

Do prophesy upon it dangerously : 
Young Arthur's death is common in their 

mouths : 
And, when they talk of him, they shake their 

heads 
And whisper one another in the ear; 
190 And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist, 
Whilst he that hears makes fearful action, 
With wrinkled brows, with nods, with rolling eyes. 
I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, 
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, 
With open moutji swallowing a tailor's news ; 
Who, with his shears and measure in his hand, 
Standing on slippers, which his nimble haste 
Had falsely thrust upon contrary feet, 
Told of a many thousand warlike French 
200 That were embattailed and rank'd in Kent : 
Another lean, unwash'd artificer • 
Cuts off his tale and talks of Arthur's death. 
K. John. Why seek'st thou to possess me 

with these fears ? 
Why urgest thou so oft young Arthur's death ? 
Thy hand hath murder'd him : I had a mighty 

cause 



sc. ii.] KING JOHN. 99 

To wish him dead, but thou hadst none to kill 
him. 
Hub. No'had, my lord! why, did you not 

provoke me ? 
K. John. It is the curse of kings to be at- 
tended 
By slaves that take their humors for a warrant 
To break within the bloody house of life, 210 

And, on the winking of authority, 
To understand a law, to know the meaning 
Of dangerous majesty, when perchance it frowns 
More upon humor than advis'd respect. 
Hub . Here is your hand and seal for what I 

did. 
K. John. Oh, when the last account 'twixt 
heaven and earth 
Is to be made, then shall this hand and seal 
Witness against us to damnation ! 
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds 
Make deeds ill done! Hadst not thou been by, 220 
A fellow by the hand of nature mark'd, 
Quoted and sign'd to do a deed of shame, 
This murder had not come into my mind : 
But taking note of thy abhorr'd aspect, 
Finding thee fit for bloody villany, 
Apt, liable to be employ'd in danger, 
I faintly broke with thee of Arthur's death; 
And thou, to be endeared to a king, 
Made it no conscience to destroy a prince. 
Hub. My lord,— 230 

K. John. Hadst thou but shook thy head or 
made a pause 
When I spake darkly what I purposed, 



ioo KING JOHN. ' [act. iv. 

Or'turn'd an eye of doubt upon my face, 
As bid me tell my tale in express words, 
Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me 

break off, 
And those thy fears might have wrought fears 

in me : 
But thou didst understand me by my signs 
And didst in signs again parley with sin ; 
Yea, without stop, didst let thy heart consent, 
240 And consequently thy rude hand to act 

The deed, which both our tongues held vile to 

name. 
Out of my sight, and never see me more ! 
My nobles leave me ; and my state is brav'd, 
Even at my gates, with ranks of foreign powers : 
Nay, in the body of this fleshly land, 
This kingdom, this confine of blood and breath, 
Hostility 'and civil tumult reigns 
Between my conscience and my cousin's death. 
Hub. Arm you against your other enemies. 
250 I '11 make a peace between your soul and you. 
Young Arthur is alive : this hand of mine 
Is yet.a maiden and an innocent hand, 
Not painted with the crimson spots of blood. 
Within this bosom never enter'd yet 
The dreadful motion of a murderous thought ; 
And you have slander'd nature in my form, 
Which, howsoever rude exteriorly, 
Is yet the cover of a fairer mind 
Than to be butcher of an innocent child. 
260 A". John. Doth Arthur live? Oh, haste thee 

to the peers, 
Throw this report on their incensed rage, 



sc. in.] KING JOHN. 101 

And make them tame to their obedience ! 
Forgive the comment that my passion made 
Upon thy feature ; for my rage was blind, 
And foul imaginary eyes of blood 
Presented thee more hideous than thou art. 
Oh, answer not, but to my closet bring 
The angry lords with all expedient haste. 
I conjure thee but slowly ; run more fast. 

[Exeunt. 

Scene III. Before the castle. 
Enter ARTHUR, on the walls. 

Arth. The wall is high, and yet will I leap 

down : 
Good ground, be pitiful and hurt me not ! 
There 's few or none do know me: if they did, 
This ship-boy's semblance hath disguis'd me 

quite. 
1 am afraid ; and yet I '11 venture it. 
If I get down, and do not break my limbs, 
I '11 find a thousand shifts to get away : 
As good to die and go, as die and stay. 

[Leaps a 1 own. 
O me! my uncle's spirit is in these stones: 
Heaven take my soul, and England keep my io 

bones ! [Dies. 

Enter PEMBROKE, SALISBURY, and BlGOT. 

Sal. Lords, I will meet him at Saint Edmunds- 
bury : 
It is our safety, and we must embrace 
This gentle offer of the perilous time. 



102 KING JOHN. [act. iv. 

Pern. Who brought that letter from the car- 
dinal ? 
Sal. The Count Melun, a noble lord of 
France; 
Whose private with me of the Dauphin's love 
Is much more general than these lines import 
Big. To-morrow morning let us meet him 

then. 
Sal. Or rather then set forward ; for 't will be 
20 Two long days' journey, lords, "or ere we meet. 

Enter the Bastard. 

Bast. Once more to-day well met, distemper'd 
lords ! 
The king by me requests your presence straight. 
Sal. The king hath dispossess'd himself of us : 
We will not line his thin bestained cloak 
With our pure honors, nor attend the foot 
That leaves the print of blood where'er it walks. 
Return and tell him so : we know the worst. 
Bast. Whate'er you think, good words, I 

think, were best. 
Sal. Our griefs, and not our manners, reason 
now. 
30 Bast. But there is. little reason in your grief ; 
Therefore 'twere reason you had manners now. 
Pern. Sir, sir, impatience hath his privilege. 
Bast. 'T is true, to hurt his master, no man 

else. 
Sal. This is the prison. What is he lies 
here? [Seeing Arthur. 

Pern; O death, made proud with pure and 
princely beauty ! 



sc. III.] KING JOHN. 103 

The earth hath not a hole to hide this deed. 

Sal. Murder, as hating what himself hath 
done, 
Doth lay it open to urge on revenge. 

Big. Or, when he doom'd this beauty to a 
grave, 
Found it too precious-princely for a grave. 40 

Sal. Sir Richard, what think you? have you 
beheld ? 
Or have you read or heard ? or could you think ? 
Or do you almost think, although you see, 
That you do see ? could thought, without this 

object, 
Form such another ? This is the very top, 
The height, the crest, or crest unto the crest, 
Of murder's arms : this is the bloodiest shame, 
The wildest savagery, the vilest stroke, 
That ever wall-eyed wrath or staring rage 
Presented to the tears of soft remorse. 5° 

Pern. All murders past do stand excus'd in 
this: 
And this, so sole and so unmatchable, 
Shall give a holiness, a purity, 
To the yet unbegotten sin of times ; 
And prove a deadly bloodshed but a jest, 
Exampled by this heinous spectacle. 

Bast. It is a damned and a bloody work; 
The graceless action of a heavy hand, 
If that it be the work of any hand. 

Sal. If that it be the work of any hand ! 60 

We had a kind of light what would ensue : 
It is the shameful work of Hubert's hand ; 
The practice and the purpose of the king: 



104 KING JOHN. [act. iv. 

From whose obedience I forbid my soul, 
Kneeling before this ruin of sweet life, 
And breathing to his breathless excellence 
The incense of a vow, a holy vow, ' 
Never to taste the pleasures of the world, 
Never to be infected with delight, 
7° Nor conversant with ease and idleness, 
Till I have set a glory to this hand, 
By giving it the worship of revenge. 

em. Q ur sou ] s religiously confirm thy .words. 

Enter Hubert. 

Hub. Lords, I am hot with haste in seeking 
you : 
Arthur doth live; the king hath sent for you. 

Sal. Oh, he is bold and blushes not at death. 
Avaunt.'thou hateful villain, get thee gone ! 
Hub. I am no villain. 
Sal. Must I rob the law? 

[Drawing his sword. 
Bast. Your sword is bright, sir; put it up 
, again. 
So Sal. Not till I sheathe it in a murderer's 
skin. 
Hub. Stand back, Lord Salisbury, stand back, 
I say ; 
By heaven, I think my sword <s as sharp as 

yours: 
I would not have you, lord, forget yourself 
Nor tempt the danger of my true defense ; 
Lest I,' by marking of vour rage, forget 
Your worth, your greatness, and nobility. 



sc. ill.] KING JOHN. 105 

Big. Out, dunghill ! dar'st thou brave a 
nobleman ? 

Hub. Not .for my life: but yet 1 dare defend 
My innocent life against an emperor. 

Sal. Thou art a murderer. 

Hub. Do not prove me so ; 90 

Yet I am none : whose tongue soe'er speaks 

false, 
Not truly speaks ; who speaks not truly, lies. 

Pern. Cut him to pieces. 

Bast. Keep the peace, I say. 

Sal. Stand by; or I shall gall you, Faulcon- 
bridge. 

Bast. Thou wert better gall the devil, Salis- 
bury : 
If thou but frown on me or stir thy foot 
Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame, 
I '11 strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime; 
Or I '11 so maul you and your toasting-iron 
That you shall think the devil is come from hell. 100 

Big. What wilt thou do, renowned Faulcon- 
bridge ? 
Second a villain and a murderer? 

Hub. Lord Bigot, I am none. 

Big. Who kill'd this prince? 

Hub. 'T is not an hour since I left him well: 
I honor'd him, I loved him, and will weep 
My date of life out for his sweet life's loss. 

Sal. Trust not those cunning waters of his 
eyes, 
For villany is not without such rheum ; 
And he. long traded in it, makes it seem 
Like rivers of remorse and innocencv. no 



106 KING JOHN. [act. iv. 

Away with me, all you whose souls abhor 
Th' uncleanly savors of a slaughter-house ; 
For I am stifled with this smell of sin. 
Big: Away toward Bury, to the Dauphin 

there ! 
Pern. There tell the king he may inquire us 
out. [Exeunt Lords. 

Bast. Here's a good world! Knew you of 
this fair work ? 
Beyond the infinite and boundless reach 
Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death, 
Art thou damn'd, Hubert. 

Hub. Do but hear me, sir. 

120 Bast. Ha! I '11 tell thee what ; 

Thou 'rt damn'd as black — nay, nothing is so 

black ; 
Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer: 
There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell 
As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child. 
Hub. Upon my soul — 

Bast. . If thou didst but consent 

To this most cruel act, do but despair; 
And if thou want'st a cord, the smallest thread 
That ever spider twisted from her womb 
Will serve to strangle thee; a rush will be a 
beam 
130 To hang thee on; or, wouldst tiiou drown thy- 
self, ' 
Put but a little water in a spoon, 
And it shall be as all the ocean. 
Enough to stifle such a villain up. 
I do suspect thee very grievously. 
Hub: If I in act, consent, or sin of thought, 



SC. iv.] KING JOHN. 107 

Be guilty of the stealing that sweet breath 
Which was embounded in this beauteous clay, 
Let hell want pains enough to torture me. 
I left him well. 

Bast. Go, bear him in thine arms. 

I am amaz'd, methinks, and lose my way 140 

Among the thorns and dangers of this world. 
How easy dost thou take all England up ! 
From forth this morsel of dead royalty, 
The life, the right, and truth of all this realm 
Is fled to heaven ; and England now is left 
To tug and scamble and to part by the teeth 
Th' unowed int'rest of proud-swelling state. 
Now for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty 
Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest 
And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace : 150 

Now powers from home and discontents at 

home 
Meet in one line; and vast confusion waits, 
As doth a raven on a sick-fall n beast, 
The imminent decay of wrested pomp. 
Now happy he whose cloak and cincture can 
Hold out this tempest. Bear away that child 
And follow me with speed : I '11 to the king. 
A thousand businesses are brief in hand, 
And heaven itself doth frown upon the land. 

[Exeunt, 



io8 KING JOHX. [act. v. 



ACT V. 

Scene I. King John's palace. 

Enter King John, Pandulph, and Attendants. 

A" John. Thus have I yielded up into your 
hand 
The circle of my glory. [Giving tin- crown. 

Pand. Take again 

From this my hand, as holding of the pope, 
Your sovereign greatness and authority. 

A". John. Now keep your holy word: go 
meet the French, 
And from his holiness use all your power 
To stop their marches 'fore we are inflam'd. 
Our discontented counties do revolt ; 
Our people quarrel with obedience. 
10 Swearing allegiance and the love of soul 
To stranger blood, to foreign royalty. 
This inundation 'of mistemper'd humor 
Rests by you only to be qualified : 
Then pause not ; for the present time 's so sick 
That present medicine must be minister'd, 
Or overthrow incurable ensues. 

Pand. It was my breath that blew this tempest 
up, I 

Upon your stubborn usage of the pope ; 
But, since you are a gentle convertite, 
20 My tongue shall hush again this storm of war 
And make fair weather in your blustering land. 
On this- Ascension-day, remember well, 
Upon your oath of service to the pope, 



sc. i.] KING JOHN. 109 

Go I to make the French lay down their arms. 

{Exit. 
K. John.' Is this Ascension-day? Did not 
the prophet 
Say that before Ascension-day at noon 
My crown I should give off? Even so I have: 
I did suppose it should be on constraint 
But, heaven be thank'd, it is but voluntarv. 

Enter the Bastard. 

Bast. All Kent hath yielded ; nothing there 
holds out 
But Dover castle : London hath receiv'd. 
Like a kind host, the Dauphin and his powers: 
Your nobles will not hear you, but are gone 
To offer service to your enemy, 
And wild amazement hurries up and down 
The little number of your doubtful friends. 
K. John. Would not my lords return to me 
again, 
After they heard young Arthur was alive? 
Bast. They found him dead and cast into the 
streets. 
An empty casket, where the jewel of life 
By some damn'd hand was robb'd and ta'en away. 
K. John. That villain Hubert told me he did 

live. 
Bast. So, on my soul, he did, for aught he 
knew. 
But wherefore do you droop ? why look you sad ? 
Be great in act as you have been in thought : 
Let not the world see fear and sad distrust 
Govern the motion of a kingly eye : 



no KING JOHX. [act. v 

Be stirring as the time ; be fire with fire ; 
Threaten the threatener and outface the brow 
50 Of bragging- horror: so shall inferior eyes, 
That borrow their behaviors from the great, 
Grow great by your example and put on 
The dauntless spirit of resolution. 
Away, and glister like the god of war 
When he intendeth to become the field: 
Show boldness and aspiring confidence. 
What, shall they seek the lion in his den 
And fright him there? and make him tremble 

there ? 
Oh, let it not be said : forage, and run 
60 To meet displeasure farther from the doors, 
And grapple with him ere he come so nigh. 
A". John. The legate of the pope hath been 
with me, 
And I have made a happy peace with him ; 
And he hath promis'd to dismiss the powers 
Led by the Dauphin. 

Bast. . O inglorious league f 

Shall we, upon the footing of our land, 
Send fair-play orders and make compromise, 
Insinuation, parley, and base truce 
To arms invasive? shall a beardless boy. 
70 A cocker'd silken wanton, brave our fields, 
And flesh his spirit in a warlike soil, 
Mocking the air with colors idty spread, 
And find no check? Let us, my liege, to arms: 
Perchance the cardinal cannot make your 

• peace ; 
Or if he do, let it at least be said 
They saw we had a purpose of defense. 



sc. ii.] KING JOHN. in 

K. John. Have thou the ordering of this 

present time. 
Bast. Away, then, with good courage ! yet, I 
know, 
Our party may well meet a prouder foe. 

\Exeunt. 

Scene II. The Dauphin's camp at St. 
Edm u n dsb ury. 

Efiter, in arms, Lewis, Salisbury, Melun, 
Pembroke, Bigot, and Soldiers. 

Lew. My Lord Melun, let this be copied out, 
And keep it safe for our remembrance : 
Return the precedent to these lords again ; 
That, having our fair order written down. 
Both they and we, perusing o'er these notes, 
May know wherefore we took the sacrament 
And keep our faiths firm and inviolable. 

Sal. Upon our sides it never shall be broken. 
And, noble Dauphin, albeit we swear 
A voluntary zeal and unurg'd faith 
To your proceedings ; yet believe me, prince, 
I am not glad that such a sore of time 
Should seek a plaster by contemn'd revolt, 
And heal th' inveterate canker of one wound 
By making many. Oh, it grieves my soul 
That I must draw this metal from my side 
To be a widow-maker ! Oh, and there 
Where honorable rescue and defense 
Cries out upon the name of Salisbury ! 
But such is the infection of the time 
That, for the health and physic of our right, 



ii2 KING JOHN, [act. V. 

We cannot deal but with the very hand 
Of stern injustice and confused wrong. 
And is 't not pity, my grieved friends, 
That we, the sons and children of this isle, 
Were born to see so sad an hour as this ; 
Wherein we step after a stranger, march 
Upon her gentle bosom, and fill up 
Her enemies' ranks, — I must withdraw and weep 

30 Upon the spot of this enforced cause, — 
To grace the gentry of a land remote, 
And follow unacquainted colors here? 
What, here? O nation, that thou couldst re- 
move! 
That Neptune's arms, who clippeth thee about, 
Would bear thee from the knowledge of thyself, 
And grapple thee unto a pagan shore, 
Where these two Christian armies might combine 
The blood of malice in a vein of league, 
And not to spend it so unneighborly ! 

40 Lav. A noble temper dost thou show in this 
And great affections wrestling in thy. bosom 
Doth make an earthquake of nobility. 
Oh', what a noble combat hast thou fought 
Between compulsion and a brave respect! 
Let me wipe off this honorable dew 
That silvery doth progress on thy cheeks: 
My heart bath melted at a lady's tears, 
Being an ordinary inundation ; ' 
But this effusion of such manly drops, 

50 This shower, blown up by tempest of the soul, 
Startles mine eyes, and makes me more amaz'd 
Than had I seen the vanity top of heaven 
Figur'd quite o'er with burning meteors. 



sc. ii.] KING JOHN. 113 

Lift up thy brow, renowned Salisbury, 

And with a great heart heave away this storm : 

Commend these waters to those baby eyes 

That never saw the g. mt world enrag'd ; 

Nor met with fortune other than at feasts, 

Full of warm blood, of mirth, of gossiping. 

Come, come ; for thou shalt thrust thy hand as 60 

deep 
Into the purse of rich prosperity 
As Lewis himself: so. nobles, shall you all 
That knit your sinews to the strength of mine. 
And even there, methinks, an angel spake: 

Enter Pandulph. 

Look, where the holy legate comes apace 
To give us warrant from the hand of heaven, 
And on our actions set the name of right 
With holy breath. 

Patni. Hail, noble prince of France! 

The next is this : King John hath reconcil'd 
Himself to Rome ; his spirit is come in 70 

That so stood out against the holy church, 
The great metropolis and see of Rome : 
Therefore thy threatening colors now wind up; 
And tame the savage spirit of wild war, 
That, like a lion foster'd up at hand, 
It may lie gently at the foot of peace 
And be no further harmful than in show. 

Lew. Your grace shall pardon me, I will not 
back : 
I am too high-born to be propertied, 
To be a secondary at control, 80 

Or useful serving-man and instrument, 



U4 KIXG JOB [a 

To any sovereign state throughout the world. 
Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars 

this chastis'd kingdom and no 
And brought in matter that should teed this 
fire: 

- far too huge to be blown am 
. that same weak wind which enkinc 
:aught me how to know the face of right, 

Acquainted me with interest to this land. 
9° Ye.i. thrust this enterprise into my iieart : 
And come ye now to :esl me John hath r 
th Rome? What is that pc 
me? 
I. by the honor of my raarriage-beii. 

.-.nd for no 
erd. must I t.i 
hat John hath made his 
Ro: 

- - _ : What pen: -me 
bor 

: :" 
7 inderr. pthis 5 *t not I 

iooThat v. idergo _ : 

to are liat 
ssand maim 
Ha these islanders s 

re bankd their u 
: I not here the be- -, .me, 

To win this 

a 

N . a mv soul, it never shall be said. 
Pm* . look but on the outside of this 



SC. II.] KING JOHN. 1 1 5 

Lew. Outside or inside, I will not return no 

Till my attempt so much be glorified 
As to my ample hope was promised 
Before I drew this gallant head of war, 
And cull'd these fiery spirits from the world 
To outlook conquest and to win renown 
Even in the jaws of danger and of death. 

[ Tr limpet sounds. 
What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us? 

Enter the BASTARD, attended. 

Bast. According to the fair play of the world, 
Let me have audience ; I am sent to speak : 
My holy lord of Milan, from the king 120 

I come to learn how you have dealt for him ; 
And, as you answer, I do know the scope 
And warrant limited unto my tongue. 

Pand. The Dauphi© is too willful-opposite 
And will not temporize with my entreaties; 
He flatly says he '11 not lay down his arms. 

Bast. By all the blood that ever fury breath'd, 
The youth says well. Now hear our English 

king ; 
For thus his royalty doth speak in me. 
He is prepar'd. and reason too he should : 130 

This apish and unmannerly approach, 
This harness'd masque and unadvised revel, 
This unhair'd sauciness and boyish troops, 
The king doth smile at; and is well prepar'd 
To whip this dwarfish war, these pygmy arms, 
From out the circle of his territories. 
That hand which had the strength, even at your 
door, 



n6 KING JOHN. [act. v. 

To cudgel you and make you take the hatch. 
To dive like buckets in concealed wells, 
140 To crouch in litter of your stable planks, 

To lie like pawns lock'd'upin chests and trunks, 
To hug with swine, to seek sweet safety out 
In vaults and prisons, and to thrill and shake 
Even at the crying of your nation's crow, 
Thinking his voice an armed Englishman ; — 
Shall that victorious hand be feebled here 
That in your chambers gave you chastisement ? 
No: know the gallant monarch is in arms' 
And, like an eagle o'er his aerie, towers 
15° To souse annoyance that comes near his nest. 
And you degenerate, you ingrate revolts, 
You bloody Neroes, ripping up the womb 
Of your dear mother England, blush for shame ; 
For your own ladies and pale-visag'd maids 
Like Amazons come tripping after drums, 
Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change, 
Their needles to lances, and their gentle hearts 
To fierce and bloody inclination. 

Lew. There end thy brave, and turn thy face 
' in peace ; 
160 We grant thou canst outscold us : fare thee well ; 
We hold our time too precious to be spent 
With such a brabbler. 

Rand. Give me leave to speak. 

Bast. No, I will speak. / 

Lew. We will attend to neither. 

Strike up the drums ; and let the tongue of war 
Plead. for our interest and our being here. 

Bast. Indeed, your drums, being beaten, will 
cry out ; 



sc. in.] KING JOHN. 117 

And so shall you, being beaten : do but start 

An echo with the clamor of thy drum, 

And even at. hand a drum is ready brac'd 

That shall reverberate all as loud as thine ; 17° 

Sound but another, and another shall 

As loud as thine rattle the welkin's ear 

And mock the deep-mouth'd thunder : for, at 

hand, 
Not trusting to this halting legate here, 
Whom he hath us'd rather for sport than need, 
Is warlike John ; and in his forehead sits 
A bare-ribb'd death, whose office is this day 
To feast upon whole thousands of the French. 
Lew. Strike up our drums, to find this danger 

out. 
Bast. And thou shalt find it, Dauphin, do not 180 

doubt. {Exeunt. 

Scene III. The field of battle. 
Alarums. E?iter King John and Hubert. 

K. John. How goes the day with us ? oh» 

tell me, Hubert. 
Hub. Badly, I fear. How fares your majesty ? 
K. John. This fever, that hath troubled me 

so long, 
Lies heavy on me ; oh, my heart is sick ! 

Enter a Messenger. 

Mess. My lord, your valiant kinsman, Faul- 
conbridge, 
Desires your majesty to leave the field 
And send him word by me which way you go. 



u8 KING JOHN. [act. v. 

K. John. Tell him, toward Swinsteed, to the 

abbey there. 
Mess. Be of good comfort ; for the great sup- 
ply 
loThat was expected by the Dauphin here 

Are wreck'd three nights ago on Goodwin Sands. 
This news was brought to Richard but e'en now : 
The French fight coldly and retire themselves. 
K. John. Ay me ! this tyrant fever burns me 
up, 
And will not let me welcome this good news. 
Set on toward Swinstead : to my litter straight; 
Weakness possesseth me, and I am faint. 

[Exeunt. 

SCENE IV. Another part of the field. 
Enter Salisbury, Pembroke, and Bigot. 
Sal. I did not think the king so stor'd with 

friends. 
Pern. Up once again; put spirit in the 
French : , 
If they miscarry, we miscarry too. 

Sai. That misbegotten devil, Faulconbridge, 
In spite of spite alone upholds the day. 

Pern. They say King John sore sick hath left 
the field. 

Enter Melun, wouncjed. 
Mel. Lead me to the revolts of England here. 
Sal. When we were happy we had other 

names. 
Pern. It is the Count Melun. 
Sal, • Wounded to death 



sc. iv. J KING JOHN. 1x9 

Mel. Fly, noble English, you are bought and 10 
sold ; 
Unthread the rude eye of rebellion 
And welcome home again discarded faith. 
Seek out King John and fall before his feet; 
For, if the French be lords of this loud day, 
He means to recompense the pains you take 
By cutting off your heads: thus hath he sworn 
And I with him, and many moe with me, 
Upon the altar at Saint Edmundsbury ; 
Even on that altar where we swore to you 
Dear amity and everlasting love. 20 

Sal. May this be possible? may this be true? 

Mel. Have I not hideous death within my 
view, 
Retaining but a quantity of life, 
Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax 
Resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire ? 
What in the world should make me now deceive, 
Since I must lose the use of all deceit? 
Why should I then be false, since it is true 
That I must die here and live hence by truth ? 
I say again, if Lewis do win the day, 30 

He is forsworn, if e'er those eyes of yours 
Behold another day break in the east: 
But e'en this night, whose black, contagious 

breath 
Already smokesabout the burning crest 
Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun, — 
E'en this ill night, your breathing shall expire. 
Paying the fine of rated treachery 
Even with a treacherous fine of all your lives, 
If Lewis by your assistance win the day. 



120 KING JOHN. [act v. 

4° Commend me to one Hubert with your king: 
The love of him, and this respect besides, 
For that my grandsire was an Englishman, 
Awakes my conscience to confess all this. 
In lieu whereof, I pray you, bear me hence 
From forth the noise and rumor of the field, 
Where I may think the remnant of my thoughts 
In peace, and part this body and my soul 
With contemplation and devout desires. 

Sal. We do believe thee : and beshrew my 
soul 

5° But I do love the favor and the form 
Of this most fair occasion, by the which 
We will untread the steps of damned flight, 
And like a bated and retired flood, 
Leaving our rankness and irregular course, 
Stoop low within those bounds we have o'er- 

look'd 
And calmly run on in obedience 
Even to our ocean, to our great King John. 
My arm shall give thee help to bear thee hence ; 
For 1 do see the cruel pangs of death 

6o Right in thine eye. Away, my friends! New 
flight; ,- 
And happy newness, that intends old right. 

{Exeunt, leading off Melun. 

Scene V. The Frencft"eamp. 

Elite}' Lewis and his train. 

Lew. The sun of heaven methought was loath 
to set, 
But stay'd and made the western welkin blush, 



sc. v.] • KING JOHN. 121 

When English measure backward their own 

ground 
In faint retire. Oh, bravely came we off, 
When, with a volley of our needless shot 
After such bloody toil, we bid good night; 
And wound our tattering colors clearly up, 
Last in the field, and almost lords of it ! 

Enter a Messenger. 

Mess. Where is my prince, the Dauphin? 
Lew. Here : what news? 

Mess. The Count Melun is slain ; the English 10 
lords 
By his persuasion are again fall'n off; 
And your supply, which you have wish'd so 

'long. 
Are cast away and sunk on Goodwin Sands. 
Lew. Ah, foul shrewd news! beshrew thy 
very heart ! 
I did not think to be so sad to-night 
As this hath made me. Who was he that said 
King John did fly an hour or two before 
The stumbling night did part our weary powers? 
Mess. Whoever spoke it, it is true, my lord. 
Lew. Well ; keep good quarter and good care 20 
to-night : 
The day shall not be up so soon as I 
To try the fair adventure of to-morrow. [Exeunt, 



122 KING JOHN. [act v, 

SCENE VI. An open place in the neighborhood 
of Swinstead Abbey. 

Enter the Bastard and Hubert, severally. 

Hub. Who 's there? speak, ho! speak quickly 

or I shoot. 
Bast. A friend. What art thou ? 
Hub. Of the part of England. 

Bast. Whither dost thou go ? 
Hub. What 's that to thee ? why may not I 
demand 
Of thine affairs, as well as thou of mine? 
Bast. Hubert, I think ? 

Hub. Thou hast a perfect thought : 

I will upon all hazards well believe 
Thou art my friend, thou know'st my tongue so 

well. 
Who art thou ? 

Bast. Who thou wilt: and if thou please, 

to Thou mayst befriend me so much as to think 
I come one way of the Plantagenets. 
Hub. Unkind remembrance! thou and eye- 
less night 
Have done me shame : brave soldier, pardon me. 
That any accent breaking from thy tongue 
Should 'scape the true acquaintance of mine ear. 
Bast. Come, come; san 3 compliment, what 

news abroad ? 
Hub. Why here walk I in the black brow of 
night 
To find you out. 

Bast.- Brief, then ; and what 's the news? 



sc. vi.] KING JOHN. 123 

Hub. O my sweet sir, news fitting to the 
night, 
Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible. 20 

Bast. Show me the very wound of this ill 
news : 
I am no woman, I '11 not swoon at it. 

Hub. The king, I fear, is poison'd by a monk: 
I left him almost speechless; and broke out 
T' acquaint you with this evil that you might 
The better arm you to the sudden time 
Than if you had at leisure known of this. 

Bast. How did he take it? who did taste to 
him ? 

Hub. A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain, 
Whose bowels suddenly burst out: the king 30 

Yet speaks and peradventure may recover. 

Bast. Who didst thou leave to tend his 
majesty? 

Hub. Why, know you not ? the lords are all 
come back, 
And brought Prince Henry in their company; 
At whose request the king hath pardon'd them, 
And they are all about his majesty. 

Bast. Withhold thine indignation, mighty 
heaven, 
And tempt- us not to b -ar above our power! 
I '11 tell thee, Hube i, half my power this night, 
Passing these flats, are taken by the tide; 40 

These Lincoln Washes have devoured them; 
Myself, well mounted, hardly have escaped. 
Away before: conduct me to the king; 
I doubt he will be dead or ere I come. {Exeunt. 



124 KING JOHN. [act v. 

Scene VII. The orchard in Sw instead Abbey. 

Enter Prince Henry, Salisbury, and Bigot. 

P. Hen. It is too late: the life of all his blood 
Is touch'd corruptibly; and his pure brain, 
Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling- 
house, 
Doth by the idle comments that it makes 
Foretell the ending of mortality. 

Enter Pembroke. 

Pern. His highness yet doth speak, and holds 
belief 
That, being brought into the open air, 
It would allay the burning quality 
Of that fell poison which assaileth him. 
10 P. Hen. Let him be brought into the orchard 
here. 
Doth he still rage? [Exit Bigot. 

Pern. He is more patient 

Than when you left him ; even now he sung. 

P. Hen. O vanity of sickness ! fierce extremes 
In their continuance will not feel themselves. 
Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, 
Leaves them, invisible, and his siege is now 
Against the mind, the which he pricks .and 

wounds 
With many legions of strange fantasies, 
Which, in their throng and press to that last hold, 
20 Confound themselves. 'T is strange that death 
should sing. 
I am the cygnet to this pale, faint swan, 
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death, 



sc. vii.] KING JOHN. 125 

And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings 
His soul and body to their lasting rest. 

Sal. Be of good comfort, prince; for you are 
born 
To set a form upon that indigest 
Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude. 

Enter Attendants, and Bigot, carrying King 
John in a chair. 

K. John. Ay, marry, now my soul hath elbow- 
room ; 
It would not out at windows nor at doors. 
There is so hot a summer in my bosom 30 

That all my bowels crumble up to dust: 
I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen 
Upon a parchment, and against this fire 
Do I shrink up. 

P. Hen. How fares your majesty? 

K. John. Poison'd, — ill fare — dead, forsook, 
cast off : 
And none of you will bid'the winter come 
To thrust his icy fingers in my maw, 
Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course 
Through my burn'd bosom, nor entreat the north 
To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips 40 
And comfort me with cold. I do not ask you 

much, 
I beg cold comfort ; and you are so strait 
And so ingrateful, you deny me that. 

P. Hen. Oh, that there were some virtue in 
my tears 
That might relieve you ! 

K. John. The salt in them is hot. 



126 KING JOHNT [act. v. 

Within me is a hell ; and there the poison 
Is as a fiend confin'd to tyrannize 
On unreprievable, condemned blood. 

Enter the Bastard. 

Bast. Oh, I am scalded with my violent 
motion 
50 And spleen of speed to see your majesty ! 

K. John. O cousin, thou art come to set 
mine eye : 
The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd, 
And all the shrouds wherewith my life should 

sail 
Are turned to one thread, one little hair: 
My heart hath one poor string to stay it by, 
Which holds but till thy news be uttered ; 
And then all this thou seest is but a clod 
And module of confounded royalty. 

Bast. The Dauphin is preparing hitherward, 
60 Where heaven He knows how we shall answer 
him ; 
For in a night the best part of my power, 
As, I upon advantage did remove, 
Were in the Washes all unwarily 
Devoured by "the unexpected flood. 

[ The king dies. 
Sal. You breathe these dead .news in as dead 
an ear. , 

My liege ! my lord ! but now a king, now thus. 
P. Hen. E'en so must I run on, and e'en so 
stop. 
What surety of the world, what hope, what stay, 
When. this w T as now a king, and now is clay? 



sc. VII.] KING JOHN. 127 

Bast. Art thou gone so ? I do but stay be- 70 

hind 
To do the office for thee of revenge, 
And then my soul shall wait on thee to heaven, 
As it on earth hath been thy servant still. 
Now, now, you stars that move in your right 

spheres, 
Where be your powers ? show now your mended 

faiths, 
And instantly return with me again 
To push destruction and perpetual shame 
Out of the weak-door of our fainting land. 
Straight let us seek, or straight we shall be 

sought ; 
The Dauphin rages at our very heels. 80 

Sal. It seems you know not then so much 

as we : 
The cardinal Pandulph is within at rest, 
Who half an hour since came from the Dauphin, 
And brings from him such offers of our peace 
As we with honor and respect may take, 
With purpose presently to leave this war. 

Bast. He will the rather do it when he sees 
Ourselves well sinewed to our defense. 

Sal. Nay, it is in a manner done already; 
For many carriages he hath dispatch'd 90 

To the sea-side, and put his cause and quarrel 
To the disposing of the cardinal : 
With whom yourself, myself, and other lords, 
If you think meet, this afternoon will post 
To consummate this business happily. 

Bast. Let it be so : and you, my noble prince, 
With other princes that may best be spar'd, 



128 KING JOHN. [act. v. 

Shall wait upon your father's funeral. 
P. Hen. At Worcester must his body be 

interr'd ; 
For so he will'd it. 
ioo Bast. Thither shall it then : 

And happily may your sweet self put on 
The lineal state and glory of the land ! 
To whom, with all submission, on my knee 
I do bequeath my faithful services 
And true subjection everlasti-ngly. 

Sal. And the like tender of our love we 

make, 
To rest without a spot for evermore. 
P. Hen. 

you thanks 
And knows not how to do it but with tears. 
1 10 Bast. Oh, let us pay the time but needful woe, 
Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs. 
This England never did, nor never shall, 
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 
But when it first did help to wound itself. 
Now these her princes are come home again, 
Come the three corners of the world in arms, 
And we shall shock them. Naught shall make 

us rue, 
If England to itself do rest but true. [Exeunt. 



NOTES. 



ACT I. 

Scene I. 

i France. Philip Augustus, King of France. 

3 In my behavior, as represented in my person and by my 

° U r toiStSrfS? ap^eSobe used here in the sense of feudal 

dependencies. 
i7 control, constraint, compulsion. . toi , 

or sullen presage Though sullen may not appropriately 

describe the P trum^'s note, S it may fitly character, ze the 

mournful and threatening message which it accompanied. 

decay, destruction, ruin. 

, n conduct, escort. _ . , _ , . 

£ Pembroke. William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke. 
62' I put you o'er, I refer you. • **„„>, 

68 a', a colloquial abbreviation of he. See 11. 1. 136, Much 

Ado, 5. 3. 201: ''If he do fear God, a' must necessarily keep 

6a round, used with numerals as a plural. 
7 % whether is spelled in the folios, as it was pronounced, 
"where." , 

78. Fair fall, good luck befall. 

£' Ata C l k f:f P aced lia g r ro e at tUre Groat S and I half- groats with the 
profile or half-face of the king were first struck m 1503, ^ 
the 18th year of Henry VII (Hawkins, The Stiver Coins of 

E 7ot took"it 2 on his death, not, maintained it on his death- 
bed, but maintained it by an oath, the asseveration being as 
true as his death was certain ; or, as I rather incline to 
believe, staking his life as security for his truth 

119, 120. hadst thou rather be ... or to enjoy, in sucn 

I29 



130 NOTES. [act i. 

clauses it is not uncommon to insert to before the second in- 
finitive, though it is omitted before the first. . 

121. Lord of thy presence, with only your fine person for 
your fortune; an if, a reduplicated form of if, commonly 
printed and if in the folios. 

123. Sir Robert's his, that "is, his shape, which is also his 
father Sir Robert's. 

127. three- farthings. In 1561 Queen Elizabeth coined 
three-farthing pieces of silver, which were of course extremely 
thin, and had the queen's profile or half-face, with a rose 
behind her ear, to distinguish them from the silver pence. 
They were discontinued in 1582. 

128. to his shape, in addition to his shape. 

131. sir Nob is said to be a contemptuous diminutive of Sir 
Robert. 

140. give our betters way, allow our superiors to pass 
before us. 

151. The proverbial sayings which follow are characteristic 
of the Bastard's rusticity of breeding. 

152. In at the window, or else o'er the hatch are both ex- 
pressions applied to those who have come into the world in an 
irregular manner. 

163. any Joan a lady. Joan was a common name among 
peasants. 

164. Good den, good even, or good evening. 

167. 'T is too respective. The construction is the same as 
if in the previous line instead of forget we had not remember, 
and the antecedent to It then would be to remember men's 
names. 

168. for your conversion, for one who has undergone such a 
change of ranu as you have. 

169. He and his toothpick. In Sir Thomas Overbury's 
Characters, quoted by Malone, there is a description of An 
Affectate Traveler : " He censures all things by countenances, 
and shrugs, and speakes his own language with shame and 
lisping : he will choake, rather than confesse beere good 
drinke ; and his pick-tooth is a maine part of his behaviour." 

169. at my worship's mess. A mess was properly a party 
of four, as at the Inns of Court still, and Nares (Glossary) says 
that at great dinners the guests were always arranged in fours ; 
so that the Bastard means, in the particular set allotted to per- 
sons of his quality. 

172. picked, spruce, trim, affected ; man of countries, one 
who in his travels had seen many countries. 

175. an Absey book or ABC book, which appears to have 
combined the Alphabet and the Catechism. 

182. The Pyrenean, now called the Pyrenees. 



sc. I.] NOTES. 131 

185. mounting, aspiring, ambitious. 

187. doth not smack, hath not some taste. 

189. device, fashion and ornaments of dress. 

191. motion,, impulse or tendency. 
' 204. Colbrand the giant, overthrown by Guy of Warwick 
before King Athelstan at Winchester. 

210. Philip ! sparrow. From his chirping note the sparrow 
early got the name of Philip. Skelton wrote The boke of 
Phyllyp Sparowe. 

211. toys, trifles, idle rumors or follies. 

218. Knight, knight, good mother, Basilisco-like. There 
is an allusion here to an old play called Soliman and Perseda, 
printed in 1599, but written at least as early as 1592. Basilisco 
is a cowardly braggart, and Piston the buffoon, jumping upon 
his back, makes him take oath upon his dudgeon dagger. 

232. dispose, disposal. 

235. The aweless lion. The story of Richard's encounter 
with a lion, and of his plucking out the lion's heart, is told in 
the old metrical romance of which he is the hero,'and is re- 
peated in Rastell's Chronicle, where there is a picture of the 
scene. 

ACT II. 

Scene I. 

1. Angiers, Angers, the capital of Anjou. 

2. that great forerunner of thy blood. By some strange 
carelessness, Shakespeare here makes Arthur in the direct line 
of descent from Richard. 

5. By this brave duke, etc. This is not in accordance 
with history, for Richard was slain by an arrow at the siege of 
Chaluz, which belonged to Vidomar, viscount of Limoges, and 
the Duke of Austria died some years before. Shakespeare, 
however, is not following the chronicles but the old play. 

7. importance, importunity, urgency. 

23. that white-faced shore ol which the " chalky cliffs " 
were supposed to have given the island the name of Albion. 

37. bent, aimed, directed. The terms of archery were ap- 
plied to other weapons than the bow. 

38. the brows. As the gates are the eyes of the city the bat- 
tlements are the eyebrows. 

40. To cull the plots of best advantages, to select the posi- 
tions which are most favorable for the attack. 
49. indirectly, unrighteously, wrongfully. 
53. coldly, calmly, without passion or feverish impatience. 



132 NOTES. [act ii. 

60. expedient, quick, expeditious. 

63. Ate, the goddess of revenge and mischief. Compare 
Julius Caesar, iii. 1. 271 : 

" And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, 
With Ate by his side come hot from hen. 1 ' 

64. her niece or granddaughter, Blanch being the daughter 
of John's sister Eleanor and Alphonso the Eighth, King of 
Castile. 

65. a bastard of the king's deceased, one of the deceased 
king's bastards. The line is borrowed almost literally from 
the old play, as Malone has pointed out. 

66. unsettled humors, used by metonymy for persons of 
unsettled disposition. 

67. voluntaries, volunteers. 

68. spleens, hasty tempers, passions, of which the spleen 
was believed to be the seat. 

85. lineal, due to us in virtue of our descent. 

87. "Whiles, while ; the old genitive of A.S. hwil, time, used 
adverbially. 

95. under-wrought, undermined ; his for its — a form as yet 
rarely used. 

97. outfaced infant state, browbeaten, put down by in- 
timidation or bravado, the state that belongs to an infant. 

101. abstract, summary, epitome. 

103. draw, draw out, expand ; this brief, this short writing. 
The legal metaphor suggested by abstract is still kept up. 

109. owe, own, are rightful owners of. 

in. articles, the particulars of a document. 

123. check, control, chide, rebuke. 

125. As thine was to thy husband. Elinor had been 
divorced from her first husband, Louis the Seventh of France, 
for infidelity. 

139. smoke. Delius thinks there is a reference to the use of 
smoke for the purpose of destroying moths. But in the North 
country dialect to smoke is synonymous with to thrash ; your 
skin-coat. Austria is supposed to be wearing the lion's skin 
which he had taken from Richard. 

144. great Alcides' shows, the skin of the Nemean lion 
worn by Hercules. 

147. cracker, boaster, braggart. In jhe North-country 
dialect to crack is to boast. 

149. straight, straightway, at once. 

156. Bretagne, spelled Britaine in the first folio. 

160, 161. it, the old form of its, used ironically by Constance 
in imitating the language of the nursery. Compare Lear, 
i. 4. 236. , But it also occurs seriously in many passages of 



sc. i.] NOTES. 133 

Shakespeare. See Hamlet, i. 2. 216 : " It lifted up it head." 
And Winter's Tale, iii. 2. 101 : 

" The innocent milk in it most innocent mouth. " 

165. coil, turmoil, disturbance. 

167. she refers to His mother. 

183. Bedlam, lunatic — a contraction for Bethlehem, name 
of an old monastery converted into an asylum for the insane. 

187. And with her plague ; her sin his injury, etc. Mr. 
Roby interprets the whole passage thus : " God hath made her 
sin and herself to be a plague to this distant child, who is 
punished for her and with the punishment belonging to her." 

191. unadvised, rash, inconsiderate. 

196. to cry aim, to give encouragement or approval ; a term 
of archery. 

205. parle, parley, conference. 

210. cannons and cannon are both used for the plural by 
Shakespeare. An anachronism here, as cannon were first used 
at Cr^cy, 1346. 

215. winking, closed. To wink is properly to shut the 
eyes. 

217. doth is attracted to the singular by the nearer waist. 

220. dishabited, dislodged. 

233. Forwearied, exhausted. Spelled forewearied in the 
folios; just as it is usual to write forego instead of forgo, 
while no one would use forebid or foreget for forbid and 
forget. 

253. unvex'd, undisturbed, unmolested. Vex had formerly 
a much stronger sense than at present. See Psalm lxxxviii. 
6, Prayer Book Version : " Thou hast vexed me with all thy 
storms ;" retire, retreat. 

259. roundure, circuit, enclosure. 

281. compound, settle, agree. 

288. swing'd, beat, whipped. 

290. some fence, some skill in weapons. 

318. staff, the shaft of a lance. 

328. censured, judged, estimated. 

354. mousing, tearing, as a cat does a mouse, or a lion its 
prey. 

357. Cry " havoc ! " The signal that no quarter was to be 
given. 
• 358. potents, potentates. 

359. confusion, destruction, overthrow. 

371. King'd of our fears. The citizens were not masters of 
their fear but were overpowered by it, and resolved to ac- 
knowledge no other sovereign till it was allayed by the appear- 
ance of the rightful king. 



134 NOTES. [act ii. 

373. scroyles, scabs, scrofulous wretches ; a term of con- 
tempt, from the French les escrouelles, the king's evil. 
376. industrious, busy, laborious. 
378. mutines, mutineers. 

383. soul-fearing, soul-terrifying. For fear in this active 
sense, see The Merchant of Venice, ii. 1. 9 : 

" I tell thee, lady, this aspect of mine 
Hath fear'd the valiant." 

395. states, used of persons holding high positions. 

396. the policy, which is so much thought of. 
401. peevish, foolish, childish, wayward. 
448. spleen, quick impulse, impetuosity. 

463. bastinado, a beating; from the Italian Bastonata, a 
bastinado, or cudgel blow. 

466. Zounds = 'Swounds, that is, God's wounds, a common 
oath. 

478. remorse is used here, as it frequently is by Shake- 
speare, in the sense of compassion or tender feeling, without 
the idea of compunction. 

481. treaty, offer, proposal of agreement. 

503. table, the tablet on which a picture is painted. 

513. it, redundant, that anything in the previous line being 
the object to translate. 

527. Volquessen, the ancient country of the Velocasses, 
whose capital was Rouen ; divided in modern times into 
Vexin Normand and Vexin Francais. 

535. assur'd, affianced, betrothed. 

544. passionate, full of lamentation, sorrowful. 

552. Earl of Richmond. Arthur's grandfather, Conan le 
Petit, Duke of Brittany, and father of Constance, was the first 
who styled himself Earl of Richmond, although the lordship 
of the Honor of Richmond had been originally granted to his 
ancestor, Alan Fergaunt, Count of Brittany, by the Conqueror. 

555. solemnity, marriage ceremony. 

561. composition, compact, agreement. 

563. departed, parted. " Till death us do part," in the mar- 
riage service, once read, '.' till death us depart.' 1 '' 

566. rounded, whispered. The proper form of the word is 
rouned from Anglo-Saxon runian. 

567. With, by. , 

568. broker, an agent or go-between. Whatever be the 
etymology of this word, and it is very uncertain, it has 
nothing to do with break. 

571. Who. The antecedent is maids, not commodity, and 
the meaning of the sentence is clear although the construction 
is irregular. 

573. tickling, flattering. 



SC. I.] 



NOTES. 135 



574. The figures of speech in the next few lines are derived 
from the game of bowls, bias, the weight of lead introduced 
into one side of a bowl in order to make it turn towards the side 
on which the weight is. A perfectly uniform spherical bowl on 
a perfectly level and smooth ground would run in a perfectly 
straight line. The word bias is derived from the French biais, 
and this again is said by Brachet to be from the Lat. bifacem, 
which is applied to a person whose vision is crooked. 

575. who is used of inanimate objects regarded as persons. 
579. indifferency, impartiality. 

583. the outward eye. According to Staunton, the eye of a 
bowl was the aperture on one side which contains the bias or 
weight. 

590. his fair angels. The Angel was a gold coin worth ten 
shillings, and was so called from having on one side a figure of 
Michael and the dragon. 

591. for, because; 

597. upon commodity, for motives of advantage. 



ACT III. 
Scene I. 

If the play were historical, Salisbury would be William 
Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, son of Henry II. and Fair 
Rosamond, whose tomb is in Salisbury Cathedral. 

5. well advised, considerate, deliberate. 

19. by shaking of thy head. For <?/after gerunds or verbal 
nouns, see Abbott, Shakespeare Grammar, § 178. 

22. rheum, used of tears. 

46. swart, swarthy, black ; prodigious, monstrous. 

86. the high tides, the festivals or saints' days. 

87. Compare Job iii. 3, " Let the day perish wherein I was 
born." 

91. prodigiously be cross'd, be disappointed by the birth 
of a prodigy or monster. 

92. But, except. 

100. touch'd and tried with the touchstone, which is a black 
jasper. 
" 105. painted, fictitious, unreal. 

106. our oppression, oppression of us. 

114. O Lymoges ! O Austria ! The making one person- 
age of the Duke of Austria who threw Richard into prison in 
1193, and the Viscount of Limoges, in besieging whose castle 
of Chaluz in 1199 Richard was mortally wounded, is due to the 
old play. 



136 AZOTES. [act in. 

115. That bloody spoil, the lion's skin. 
119. humorous, capricious. 

121. soothest up, flatterest. Compare Coriolanus, ii. 2. 77: 
"You soothed not, therefore hurt not." U.p is emphatic, as 
in iv. 3. 133. 

122. A ramping fool. Ramping is suggested by the lion's 
skin which Austria wears, and is a proper epithet of the lion, 
in the sense of tearing, pawing. 

126. thy stars, the planets that govern thy destiny, and so, 
thy fate or destiny itself. 

127. fall over, desert. Fall alone is used in the same sense 
in 1. 320. 

128. doff it, put it off ; doff is do off. 

129. a calf's-skin. Sir John Hawkins* says, "When fools 
were kept for diversion in great families, they were, distin- 
guished by a calf's-skin coat, which had the buttons down the 
back." Steevens adds, " The custom is still preserved in 
Ireland ; and the fool, in any of the legends which the mum- 
mers act at Christmas, always appears in a calf's or cow's 
skin." Austria had more of the calf than the lion in him. 

136. The Cardinal's speech and John's reply are almost 
literally taken from the old play. 

138. Pandulph. Pandulphus de Masca, a native of Pisa, 
was made Cardinal in 1182, and was elected in 1218 to the 
bishopric ofNorwich. 

139. Pope Innocent the third. 

142. force perforce, violently, by violent constraint. 

14s. Stephen Langton. On the death of Hubert Fitzwalter, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, July 13, 1205, the monks elected 
Reginald the sub-prior 2 and sent to Rome to have the election 
confirmed by the pope. The pope, however, refused to confirm 
it in the absence of letters recommendatory from the king. 
The monks then, fearing the king's displeasure, begged him to 
nominate one whom they might elect, and he ordered them to 
vote for John Gray, Bishop of Norwich, who was accordingly 
chosen. But the pope quashed this election also, " and pro- 
cured by his papall authoritie the moonks of Canturburie . . . 
to choose one Stephan Langton the cardinal), of S. Chrysogon 
an Englishman borne" (Holinshed, iii. 171), whom John re- 
fused to acknowledge. ' 

147. earthy. Pope reads earthly ; interrogatories, a tech- 
nical law-term, denoting certain questions put to a witness, 
which were to be answered with the solemnities of an oath. 
In his note on this passage, Lord Campbell {Shakespeare 's 
Legal Acquirements, p. 52) says, " In the Court of Queen's 
Bench, when a complaint is made against a person for a 'con- 
tempt,' the practice is, that before sentence is finally pro- 



sc. I.] WOTES. 137 

nounced he is sent into the Crown Office, and being there 
4 charged upon interrogatories, 1 he is made to swear that he 
will ' answer all things faithfully. 1 " 

148. task, tax, charge, compel to submit. 
• 154. Shall tithe or toll, that is, shall take tithe or tax. 

173. excommunicate, excommunicated. Like many other 
words formed from the Latin participle in -attis it does not 
take the English participial ending. 

180. Thus I have room with Rome. In Shakespeare's 
time, Rome, room, and roam must all have been pronounced 
as room. Compare Julius Caesar, i. 2. 156: 

" Now is it Rome indeed and room enough. 1 ' 

209. untrimmed may be descriptive of the bride with he.' 
hair hanging loose. 

210, 211. not from her faith, But from her need, not as she 
really believes, but as her necessities compel her. 

212. only . . . but. One of these words is redundant. 

213. infer, prove, demonstrate. 
233. new, lately. 

235. To clap this royal bargain up. The figure is from 
the joining of hands at the time the bargain was made. 

240. in both, that is. in fighting and friendship. 

241. regreet, greeting, salutation. See The Merchant of 
Venice, ii. 9. 89 : 

" From whom he bringeth sensible regreets, 
To wit, besides commends and courteous breath, 
Gifts of rich value. 11 

242. fast and loose was the name of a cheating game which 
was played in various ways. 

258. the tongue, in which the poison of serpents was sup- 
posed to dwell. 

259. mortal, deadly. 

267. the champion of our church. The King of France 
was styled the Eldest Son of the Church and the Most Chris- 
tian King. 

268. sworest, hast sworn. Compare, for this use of the im- 
perfect, iii. 4. 8-i, and Genesis xliv. 28: "And I said, Surely 
he is torn in pieces; and I saw him not since. 11 See Abbott, 

§347> ... - ^ • 

275. indirect, unjust. See 11. 1. 49. 

-277. as fire cools fire. Compare Coriolanus, iv. 7. 54: 
" One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail.' 1 

281. By what thou swear'st against the thing thou 
swear 'st, by the oath thou hast taken thou hast sworn against 
religion, which is the thing thou swearest by. 

282-284. Pandulph^ argument is that no oath is binding 
which is opposed to the higher obligations of religion. The 



138 NO TES. [act hi. 

vow to God must be kept before and above all others. Other 
pledges of faith are of less certain obligation; but if by keep- 
ing them he breaks his vow to God he commits perjury in the 
highest degree, and to avoid this must break that pledge which 
is less binding than his religious obligation. Staunton and 
Hudson have rewritten the passage, and thereby have given 
it a meaning which is sufficiently clear, but may not be what 
Shakespeare intended. 

289. Is. See ii. 1. 169, 250. The verb is singular on account 
of rebellion which follows. 

292. suggestions, temptations, promptings. 

295. The peril of our curses light. Were light is plural on 
account of the nearer substantive curses. See Hamlet, i. 2. 38, 
and, Julius Caesar, v. 1. 33: 

" The posture of your blows are yet unknown." 

304. measures usually denote stately dances, but the word 
is here used for the music which accompanied them. 

317. I muse, I marvel. 

318. respects, considerations, motives. 

339. Cousin is used of anyone not in the first degree of rela- 
tionship. See iii. 3. 17, where it means grandson; puissance, 
power, military force. It is used both as a trisyllable and a 
dissyllable. 

346. jeopardy, danger, hazard. The origin of the word 
seems to be the French jeu partly a game in which the risk is 
evenly divided. 

Scene II. 

4, 5. Philip. Shakespeare appears to have forgotten that he 
was now Sir Richard. 

4. breathes, takes breath. 

5. make up, move onward. 

Scene III. 

9. imprisoned angels. See ii. 1. 590. 

11. his, its. See ii. "i. 95. 

12. Bell, book, and candle. Nares (Glossary - * says, "In 
the solemn form of excommunication used' in the Romish 
Church, the bell was tolled, the book of officer for the purpose 
used, and three candles extinguished, with certain cere- 
monies." 

13. becks, beckons. Gold and silver expressing but one 
idea, the verb is singular. See Abbott, § 336. 

26. time* Pope's correction. The folios have tune. 
39. Sound on into the drowsy race of night. There is 
evidently some corruption in this line. The difficulty seems 



sc. iv.] NOTES. 139 

to He in the word race. But it is not improbable that race is 
a misprint for ear, as Sidney Walker suggested, and this 
would be in keeping with tongue and mouth just before. 

So. conceit, the mental faculty or understanding. 

52. brooded is an instance of an adjective formed from a 
substantive by means of the participial suffix -ed. It is derived 
from the substantive brood and is therefore almost equivalent 
to brooding, or sitting on brood. 
. 55. troth, faith. 

57. adjunct to, consequent upon. 

61. a very serpent in my way. See Genesis xhx. 17 : Dan 
shall be a serpent by the way." 

65. offend, harm. 

70. powers, forces, troops. 



Scene IV. 



2 armado, a fleet of men-of-war ; from the Spanish armada, 
which is distinguished iromjlota, a fleet of merchant vessels; 
convicted, beaten, discomfited. The reference is probably 
to the great Spanish Armada, which after being harassed and 
beaten bv the English fleet was dispe.sed by a violent storm. 

6 Angiers was not taken by John till 1206. It was at the 
capture of Mirebeau, in 1202, that Elinor was rescued and 
Arthur made prisoner. 

11. with such advice or deliberation. 

19. prison of afflicted breath, in which the afflicted breath 
is imprisoned. 

23. defy, renounce. 

02. fulsome, nauseous, disgusting. . ; . 

« buss is used of coarse and wanton kissing, and is in 
keeping with the rest of Constance's exaggerated and hysten- 

^^ffStfon, afflicted lady ; the abstract being used for the 

C °4o Cr feli, fierce, cruel ; anatomy, skeleton. It is here used 
of death. See v. 2. 177. 

42. modern, commonplace. 

c.c deliver'd of, delivered from. 

s8 a babe of clouts, a doll made of clouts or rags 

68! To England. Constance here replies to Philip s invita- 
tion in line 20. 

73. envy at, envy. 

80. suspire, breathe, draw breath. . 

81. was not, hath not been. See in. 1. 268; gracious, full 
of grace, attractive, lovely. . 

85. dim, lacking color and brightness of complexion. 



Mo NOTES. [act iv.. 

90. respect. See iii. 1. 318. Pandulph means, you regard 
your grief in too hateful an aspect. 

96. Remembers me, reminds me. 

101. this form, this orderly arrangement of hair. 

107. joy, rejoice, be glad. 

in. That, so that. 

116. day, like the French joumJe, is used for the day of 
battle. 

128. rub is a technical term denoting any impediment to the 
course of a bowl. 

138. Makes nice of, is scrupulous about. 

146. lays you plots, lays plots for you or in your favor, and 
not, as he thinks, for his own gain. The emphasis is on you. 

147. true blood, the blood of the rightful heir. 

153. exhalation, meteor. 

154. no scope of nature, no circumstance within the limits 
of nature's operations, no natural effect. Pope reads scape in 
the sense of freak. 

158. Abortives, things produced contrary to the common 
course of nature, like monstrous births. 

163. gone, a euphemism for dead. 

169. this hurly, this tumult, uproar. The word is more 
common in the reduplicated form hurly-burly, as in Macbeth, 
i. 1. 3- 

174. a call, the cry of the decoy by which birds are lured to 
the net, or the whistle by which the falcon is recalled to the 
falconer's hand. Mr. Rushton (Notes and Queries, Fourth 
Series, xi. 72) quotes from Lyly's Euphues (ed. Arber, p. 392), 
" Birds are trayned with a sweet call, but caugnt with a 
broade nette." 

180. topful, brimful. So in Macbeth, i. 5. 43: 

" Unsex me here, 
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full 
Of direst cruelty ! " 

181. whet on, incite, instigate. 

ACT IV. 
Scene I. 

A room in a castle. Capell places the scene at Northampton, 
as at the opening of the play. Mr. Grant White places it at 
Canterbury ; Mr. Halliwell (Phillipps) at Dover. Beyond the 
fact that the scene changes to England, no indication of the 
locality is given. 

2. the arras, the arras hangings, so called from a special 
kind of figured tapestry manufactured at Arras. 



sc. i.] NOTES. 141 

4. which is applied to persons, as in the Lord's Prayer. 
16. Only for wantonness, out of mere levity or sportive- 
ness ; By my Christendom, my baptism or Christianity. 

19. doubt, fear, suspect. See iv. 2. 102, v. 6. 44, and Ham- 
let, i. 2. 256 : ".I doubt some foul play. 1 ' 

20. practices, plots, contrives. 
27. sudden, quick, speedy. 

34. dispiteous, pitiless. Compare Chaucer's description of 
the Parson (C. T. prol. 518) : 

" He was to sinful men not dispitous. 1 ' 

37. fair writ, well and clearly written. 

38. effect, meaning, purpose. 

42. handkercher. The spelling-, no doubt, represented the 
pronunciation. 

43. wrought it me, worked it for me. 

47. the watchful minutes to the hour, that is, the minutes 
which watch, or are watchful to, the hour. For this position 
of the adjective, compare All 's Well, iii. 4. 30: 

" To this unworthy husband of his wife." 

48. Still and anon, ever and anon. 

52. at your sick service, at your service in sickness. 
57. nor never. For the double negative see v. 7. 11a. 
61. heat, heated. Compare waft for wafted, ii. 1. 73. 
70. I would not have believed him, — no tongue but Hu- 
bert's, that is, I would have believed no tongue but Hubert's. 
82. angerly, angrily. 

85. within, that is, within the arras. 

86. from, away from. See Macbeth, iii. 1. 132 : 

" For 't must be done to-night, 
And something from the palace. 1 ' 

92. mote. The reference is to Matthew vii. 3, 4, 5, and 
Luke vi. 41, 42. 

93. a dust, a particle of dust. 

95. boisterous, roughly violent or disturbing. 

99. want pleading, be insufficient to plead. 

106, 107. with grief ... to be used, with grief that it should 
be used. 

108. In undeserv'd extremes, in acts of cruelty in which it 
has no right to be employed. 

117. tarre him on, set him on to fight. 

121. of note, noted, well known. 

123. owes, owns, possesses. 

128. but you are dead, that you are not dead. 

130. doubtless and secure, free from fear and care. 



142 NOTES. [act iv. 



Scene II. 

8. long'd-for qualifies both change and better state. 

10. guard, ornament. Guards or gards were the facings or 
trimmings of dress. 

24. to fetch about, to veer round or take a circuitous route. 

27. so new a fashion'd robe, a robe of so new a fashion. 

29. They do confound their skill in covetousness, they 
destroy what they have done skillfully by their eager desire to 
improve it. 

41. possess'd you with, informed you of. 

50. myself and them. In Shakespeare's day the different 
forms of pronouns were not rigidly used as with us. 

52. enfranchisement, deliverance from imprisonment. 

55. in rest, in quiet possession. 

56-60. Why then . . . exercise. The argument or inquiry 
takes the form of an indirect question. The people ask, says 
Pembroke, why your fears should move you to mew up your 
tender kinsmen, etc. 

57. to mew up, to confine as in a mew or coop, to coop up, 
imprison. A mew was a cage for hawks. 

60. good exercise. " In the middle ages," says Percy, 
" the whole education of princes and noble youths consisted 
in martial exercises, etc. 11 Compare As You Like It, i. 1. 76, 
where Orlando appeals to his elder brother, " You have 
trained me like a peasant, obscuring and hiding from me all 
gentleman-like qualities. The spirit of my father grows 
strong in me, and I will no longer endure it: therefore allow 
me such exercises as may become a gentleman. 11 

61. the time's enemies, those who are opposed to the 
present condition of things. 

62. To grace occasions, to give them a fair opportunitv 
for attack. 

69. the man should. For the omission of the relative, com- 
pare The Merchant of Venice, i. t. 175 : 

" I have a mind presages me such thrift." 
See Abbott, § 244. 

78. battles, armies in battle array; set refers to battles and 
not to heralds. 

79. His passion is compared to a tumor. 
92. commandment on, command over. ' 

94. grossly, unskillfully, clumsily; offer it, attempt it. 
109. thy weather, thy tempest. 

116. our intelligence, our spies. Abstract for concrete, as 
in iii. 4. 36. 

118. drawn, drawn together, assembled. 

120. the first of April. This appears to be Shakespeare's 



sc. II.] NOTES. 143 

own chronology. Queen Elinor died in 1204 (Ralph de Cogges- 
hall), in the month of July (Grafton), at the abbey of 
Beaulieu (Matthew Paris, Hist. Min.), which John had 
founded, and was buried at Westminster (Stow). The last- 
mentioned fact is doubtful. 

122. The Lady Constance died at Nantes three years and 
not three days before Elinor, August 31, 1201. 

124. idly, carelessly, without taking interest in it or troub- 
ling to make further inquiry. 

125. occasion, the course of events which were following 
each other in rapid succession. 

129. conduct, command, leading. 

137. amaz'd, bewildered, confused ; used of the effects of 
any strong emotion. 

148. Pomfret, the common spelling and pronunciation of 
Pontefract. The prophet of Pomfret appears in the old play. 

158. safety, safe custody. 

162. Lord Bigot is called in the old play Richard, earle of 
Bigot, and in Holinshed Richard earle de Bigot. Whether 
this is an error for Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, it is difficult 
to say. 

165. whom. See note, 1. 50. 

177. sprightful, high-spirited. 

185. beldams, applied contemptuously to old women, hags. 
The word originally meant grandmother. 

186. prophesy in this passage appears to be used not so 
much in the sertse of foretelling the future events predicted by 
this phenomenon as in that of commenting upon and expound- 
ing the phenomenon itself, making it the text of a dangerous 
discourse. Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying was not 
the liberty of predicting future events but of expounding 
scripture. 

191. fearful action, gestures of fear. 

198. upon contrary feet. Johnson's note on this passage 
is a curious illustration of the change of fashion. " He that is 
frighted or hurried may put his hand into the wrong glove, 
but either shoe will equally admit either foot. The author 
seems to be disturbed by the disorder which he describes. 11 
There is abundant evidence, however, that, whatever might be 
the custom in the 18th century, in the 16th shoes were not 
made straight but shaped to the right and left foot respec- 
tively. 

200. embattailed, set in order of battle. 

207. No had ! had you not ? 

210. To break within the bloody house of life, the house 
of life which thereby becomes bloody. This use of the adjec- 
tive grammarians call proleptic. 



144 NOTES. [act iv. 

214. More upon humor than advis'd respect, more out of 
caprice than deliberate consideration. 

222. Quoted, noted ; from the notes or marks in the side 
{cote) or margin of a book. 

227. broke with, communicated with. 

234. As bid, that is, such an eye as bid, etc. 

245. this fleshly land, this land of flesh, to which he com- 
pares his body. 

258, 259. a fairer mind Than to be, etc., that is, a mind too 
fair to be, etc. 

264. feature, external shape and personal appearance. 

267. closet, private apartment. So in Julius Caesar, ii. 1. 35 : 
" The taper burneth in your closet, sir." 
And Matthew vi. 6 : " But thou, when thou prayest, enter into 
thy closet." 

Scene III. 

The death of Arthur is taken from the old play. 

4. semblance, external appearance; and hence a disguise. 

11. him, the Dauphin. 

15. The Count Melun, called Vicount Meloun in the old 
play, as in Holinshed, iii. 193. 

16. private, private communication. 

20. or ere, before. With this reduplicated form compare an 
i/(\. 1. 138J and/<?r because (ii. 588). 

21. distemper'd, disordered by passion, ill-humored. 
47. arms ie here used for armorial bearings. 

49. wall-eyed, with glaring eyes. The word properly 
describes an eye in which the iris is. discolored or wanting in 
color. This gives it a fierce expression, like the glaring look 
of a man in a rage. 

52. s,ole, unique. 

53. a holiness, a purity. All other crimes being holy and 
pure in comparison.with this. 

54. times, that is, times to come. 
63. practice, contrivance, plot. 

71. this hand, that is; his own hand which is uplifted while 
he pronounces his vow. 

72. worship, honor, dignity. 

84. my true defense, the defense of mt honesty and in- 
nocence. 
95. Thou wert better, it were better for thee. 

98. betime, in good time, quickly, soon.. 

99. your toasting-iron. Steevens compares what Nym 
says in Henry V (ii. 1. 7-9) : " 1 dare not fight ; but I will wink 
and hold but mine iron : it is a simple one ; but what though ? 
it will toast cheese." 



SC. I.] 



NOTES. 145 



109. traded in it, familiar with it, accustomed to it. 
126. do but despair, simply despair, there is no hope for 
thee. 

132. ocean, a trisyllable as in ii. 1. 340. 

133. to stifle 'such a villain up. Up has an intensive force, 
giving the idea of completion. 

146. scamble, scuffle, struggle for. 

147. unowed, which now by Arthur's death is left without 
an owner. 

151. powers from home, the French troops which had 
landed ; discontents, discontented persons, malcontents. 
158. brief in hand, shortly to be dispatched. 



ACT V. 

Scene I. 

8. counties. Steevens understands by this the lords or 
nobility and not the divisions of the kingdom. Delius follows 
him on the ground that there is an opposition between dis- 
contented counties and our people, if counties be taken in its 
usual sense. But discontented counties refers only to certain 
parts of the country which were actually in revolt, while a 
spirit of disobedience affected the whole people. 

11. stranger, alien, foreign. 

19. cbnvertite, convert, penitent. Compare As You Like It, 
v. 4. 190 : 

" Out of these convertites 
There is much matter to be heard and learn'd. 11 
Florio(^ WarldeofWordes, 1598) has, " Conuertito, conuerso, 
conuerted, turned, changed, transformed. Also a conuertite." 
Mr. Hunter '{New Illustrations 0/ Shakespeare, ii. 14) main- 
tained that a convertite was not merely a convert, but a person 
who having relapsed had been recovered. 

22. on this Ascension-day, which in 1213 fell on May 23. 
The date of John's form of homage to the Pope was May 15. 

27. give off, take off and give up. 

49. outface, browbeat, intimidate. See ii. 1. 97. 

53. spirit, a monosyllable. 

54. glister, glisten, glitter. 

55. to become the field, to adorn the field of battle. 
59. forage, range abroad, like a lion in search of prey. 

66. upon the footing of our land, standing on our own soil. 
70. cocker'd, pampered. 



146 NOTES. [act v. 



Scene II. 

i. this, the compact with the English lords. 

2. remembrance is here a quadrisyllable. 

3. the precedent, the rough draft of the document. 

19. cries out upon, exclaims against the name of Salisbury 
for being on the opposite side. 

30. Upon the spot. Upon is used here, as in ii. 1. 597, upon 
commodity, and in iv. 2. 214, upon humor, to express the 
ground of ah action. Spot is stain, disgrace. 

34. clippeth thee about, embraceth thee, surroundeth thee. 

36. unto a pagan shore. The reference is to the Crusades, 
in which the Christian armies of Europe laid aside their mutual 
animosities and combined against the infidels. 

39. to spend. Where two infinitives follow an auxiliary 
verb, it is not uncommon for to to be inserted before the 
second, though it is omitted before the first, as here. 

41. affections, feelings, passions. 

42. Doth make. The nominative is the idea involved in 
the preceding clause, as if it had been the wrestling of great 
affections. See ii. 1. 249, 253, and Abbott, § 337, 

44. compulsion, the circumstances which have forced him 
into his present position ; and a brave respect, a gallant re- 
gard for his country, notwithstanding that he had joined the 
army of a foreign invader. 

46. progress, go as in a march or progress. Shakespeare 
only uses the verb in this passage. 

64. an angel spake. Lewis, seeing the legate approach as 
he was speaking, regards his coming as a confirmation of his 
words, which now 'seem to him to have been uttered by a kind 
of divine inspiration. 

79. propertied, treated as a property, or instrument for a 
particular purpose, to be thrown aside as soon as used, like a 
thing with no will of its own. The word is derived from the 
technical sense of the word property as used in the theater. 

89. interest to, right in or claim to. 

104. as I have bank'd their towns, that is, have sailed 
along the rivers on the banks of which stood their towns. 

115. to outlook, to outstare, intimidate fey looks. 

i2i. dealt for him, acted on his behalf. 

125. temporize, come to terms, compromise. 

129. in me, in my person as his representative. 

130. reason, it is reasonable. 
132*. harness'd, armed. 

133. ■unhair'd, beardless. 

138. take the hatch, jump the hatch or half-door, without 



sc. iv.] NOTES. 147 

waiting to open it. i. t. 171, o^er the hatch is used figuratively 
for an irregular mode of entering. 

144. your nation's crow. Dr. Nicholson (Notes and Queries. 
Third Series, xi. 251 1 thinks there is a reference here to the in- 
cident of the ominous flight of ravens, which was introduced 
into the play of Edward III, as striking terror into the French 
just before the battle of Poictiers. 

149. aerie, eagle's brood ; properly, a nest ; towers, rises in 
its flight in circles till it gets to a favorable height for swoop 
ing down upon and striking its prey. 

157. needles is pronounced as a monosyllable. 

159. brave, bravado, defiant speech. 

172. the welkin, the sky ; from the Middle English welkne 
or wolcne, A. S. ivolcnn, clouds. 

174. halting, limping; and, in a metaphorical sense, dilatory. 

177. a bare-ribb'd death or skeleton figure of death. 

Scene 111. 
8. Swinstead is taken from the old plav, and is an error for 
Swineshead, near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. 

Scene IV. 

10. bought and sold, betrayed, cheated. 

11. Unthread the rude eye of rebellion. Shakespeare uses 
thread elsewhere with a distinct reference to the figure in the 
Gospels (Matt. xix. 24), " It is easier for a camel to go through 
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the king- 
dom of God.' 1 Hence Coriolanus, iii. 1. 124 : " They would not 
thread the gates ; " that is, would not pass through them. 
Hence to unthread the rude eye of rebellion is to withdraw 
from the difficult and hazardous undertaking in which they 
were engaged. 

17. moe (Anglo-Saxon md) as an adjective frequently occurs 
for more. 

21. May is used for Can, as in The Merchant of Venice, 
i. 3. 7 : " May you stead me ? " for " Can you assist me ? " 

23. a quantity, a small portion, such as could be easily 
measured. 

25. Resolveth, dissolveth, melteth ; 'gainst the fire, ex- 
posed to the fire. 

29. live hence, that is. hereafter. 

36. expire, perish, come to an end. 

37, 38. fine. There is of course a play upon the two mean- 
ings of this word, penalty and end, as in Hamlet, v. 1. 115 : 
" Is this the fine of his fines ? " 

37. rated treachery, treachery which has been assessed at 
its value. 



148 NOTES. [act v 

49. beshrew my soul, evil befall my soul. 

54. rankness, lullness to overflowing. Rank is applied to a 
river in the sense of brimful in Venus and Adonis, 71 : 
" Rain added to a river that is rank 

Perforce will force it overflow the bank." 

60. Right has been suspected, and the following words have 
been proposed in its place : Fight, Fight, Bright, Fright, and 
Riot. That Right is a possible misprint for Riot is certain 
from the fact that in the first edition of the Globe Shakespeare 
riotous was misprinted righteous in Richard III, ii. 1. 100. 
Schmidt in his Shakespeare Lexicon does not consider that 
any correction is necessary. 

Scene V. 
14. shrewd, evil, bad. So in The Merchant of Venice, hi. 
2. 246 : 

"There are some shrewd contents in yon same paper. 11 
18. stumbling, the darkness being the cause of stumbling. 
20. keep good quarter, guard carefully the posts assigned 
to you. 

Scene VI. 
6. perfect, correct. 

11. one way, by one line of descent. 

12. Unkind remembrance ! Hubert reproaches his own 
want of memory, which together with the darkness prevented 
him from recognizing his friend. 

16. sans, without ; compare As You Like It, ii. 7. 166 : 
" Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. " 

23. poison'd by a monk. One of the accounts given by 
Holinshed isj " After he had lost his armie, he came to the 
abbeie of Swineshead in Lincolneshire, and there- vnderstand- 
ing the cheapenesse and plentie of corne, shewed himselfe 
greatlie displeased therewith, as he that for the hatred which 
he bare to the English people, that had so traitorouslie reuolted 
from him vnto bis adversarie Lewes, wished all miserie to 
light vpon them, and therevpon said in his anger, that he 
would cause all kind of- graine to beat a farre higher price, yer 
many daies should passe. Wherevpon a monke that heard 
him speake such words, being mooued with zeale for the 
oppression of his countrie, gaue the king poison in a cup of ale, 
wherof he first tooke the assaie. to cause the king not to sus- 
pect the matter, and so they both died in manner at one time" 
(vol. iii. p. 192 [194]). 

26. the sudden time, the emergency which has suddenly 
come upon us. 

28. who did taste to him ? It was customary for royal per- 
sonages, whose lives were supposed to be in danger from 



sc. vii.] NOTES. 149 

assassination,, to have an officer whose duty it was to taste, or 
" take the assay,"" of each dish before it was offered to them, 
in order to avoid the risk of poison. 

32. who. So in Henry V, iv. 7. 154: "Who servest thou 
under ? " Abbott, § 274. 

Scene VII. 
2. corruptibly, so as to cause it to corrupt. 
11. rage, rave. 

16. Leaves them invisible, and his siege, etc. The subject 
of i>ivisible is Death, and not the outward parts. Death, 
having destroyed the outworks of the body where the effect of 
his ravages could be seen, directs his attack upon the mind 
within where his operations are invisible to the eye. 

17. the which. See i. 1. 68, and Abbott, § 270. 

21. this pale, faint swan. Shakespeare refers more than 
once to this fiction of the dying swan. 

26. that indigest or confused chaos. 

37. maw, stomach ; A.S. maga. It is generally used of 
animals. 

42. cold comfort. In Richard II. Gaunt"s death-scene is full 
of this trifling with words; strait, illiberal, niggardly. 

48. unreprievable, condemned, condemned without hope of 
a reprieve. 

51. to set mine eye, to close mine eye. 

53. the shrouds or ropes, which form the standing rigging 
of a ship. 

55. to stay it by, like the stays which strengthen the mast. 

58. module, mold or form ; confounded, ruined, destroyed. 

60. answer him, oppose him, meet his attack. 

62. upon advantage, seizing a favorable opportunity. 

65. dead news, news of death. 

73. still, constantly. 

74. stars, etc., meaning Salisbury and the other revolted 
nobles. 

82. Cardinal Pandulph. It was Cardinal Gualo, or Guala 
Bicchieri, who really interfered between John and his French 
invaders. 

97. princes. This word may have crept in, by a printer's 
error, irom prince in the line before. But in line 115 princes is 
used of the revolted nobles. 

99. At Worcester, where his body was found in a stone 
coffin, July 17, 1797. 

THE END. 



EXAMINATION PAPERS. 



A (Historical). 
i, What is John's period as King of England ? 

2. Which one, in number, of the Plantagenets was he ? 

3. Outline his character. 

4. How came he into antagonism to the Pope ? ' 

5. By what three measures did the Pope bring him to 
obedience ? 

6. Who was Stephen Langton, and what did he do for 
England ? 

7. What great measure distinguishes John's reign ? 

8. State the most important provisions of it. 

B (On the Play as a Whole). 

1. To what group of Shakespeare's plays does King John 
belong ? 

2. Tell what you have learned about the date, the first 
acting, and the first printing of the play. 

3. Upon what was this play largely modeled, and how 
closely does Shakespeare follow the model ? 

4. What are some of Shakespeare's departures in this 
play from real history ? 

5. What, in particular, are some of the anachronisms of 
the play ? 

6. Outline the play. 

ISO 



EXAMINATION PAPERS. 151 

C (Characters). 

1. Who are Elinor and Constance before and after mar- 
riage, and what are their salient traits ? 

2. Depict Prince Arthur. 

3. For what is Faulconbridge distinguished, and what is 
his agency in the play ? 

4. What do you think of Hubert ? 

5. Were the nobles justified in their desertion of John ? 

6. What good qualities can you find in King John, in 
King Philip, and in Lewis ? 

7. How is Blanch of Spain drawn by Shakespeare ? 

D (Quotations). 

1. State by whom and on what occasions these lines were 
uttered : 

(a) Who dares not stir by day must walk by night. 

(b) A foot of honor better than I was, 

But many a many foot of land the worse. 

(c) He that perforce robs lions of their hearts 
May easily win a woman's. 

(d) He is the half part of a blessed man, 
Left to be finished by such as she. 

(e) Drawn in the flattering table of her eye. 
{/) Commodity the bias of the world. 
(g) For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop. 
(//) And hang a calf's-skin on those recreant limbs. 
(2) It is religion that doth make vows kept. 
ij) I hope your warrant will bear out the deed. 
(k) Hubert, the utterance of a brace of tongues 
Must needs want pleading for a pair of eyes. 



152 EXAMINATION PAPERS. 

(/) How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds 
Make deeds ill done ! 
(m) Unthread the rude eye of rebellion. 
(n) This England never did, nor never shall, 

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror. 
(o) And oftentimes excusing of a fault 

Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse. 
2. Give other striking quotations from this play. 

E (Verbal). 

j. Give the meaning of these words and phrases : — 

A y ; Joan ; good den ; an Absey book; Basilisco-like ; dear 
offense; spleens; whiles; scroyles ; zounds ; rounded; 
angel; doff; arras; tarre ; an if ; scamble ; clippeth ; 
ba?i&d their towns ; the welkin ; tnoe. 

2. How are these words used in the play, and what 
change of meaning have they undergone since ? 

Worship ; indirectly ; straight ; it (as possessive) ; his 
(for its) ; Bedlam ; owe ; fondly ; censure ; cousin ; re- 
morse ; conceit; convicted; defy; modern; exhalation ; 
boisterous ; enfranchisement ; weather ; prophesy ; closet ; 
rankness; shrewd ; still. 



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